After years of working with office workers and watching family members and other folke use computers, I've come to the conclusion that most people think their computer is powered by "magic".
You sit down in front of a little box, press the power button, and the screen in front of you suddenly turns into something interactive. But what's going on inside the thing?
There are elves running on a little treadmill, that's what happening! Which explains why the thing always seems like its running slow. Ba-da-boom.
Two of the most oft-misunderstood components of a computer are Random Access Memory (RAM) and (hard) drive space. Allow me to 'splain it all to ya.
Drive space is like a filing cabinet. Like a filing cabinet, you can store lots of things in it, called, predictably, files.
The mainmost problem with filing cabinets (and hard drives) is that they are slow. If you realize you need a particular file, you have to get up out of your chair, walk over to the filing cabinet, and either try to remember which drawer the file was in, or use an index (A-B, B-E, etc) on the front of each drawer to help you find what you're looking for. Then you have to walk back to your desk carrying the file with you.
RAM is like your desk. If your desk isn't big enough, you won't be able to look at several documents at the same time without spreading some out on the floor. But a computer can't spread files "on the floor". If you're trying to open a really big file, or lots of files/applications at the same time, things will start to get real slow real quick.
The reason things get slow when you don't have enough RAM is that your computer has to keep going back to your hard drive (like walking to the file cabinet) over and over. It can only spread a few things out on its "desktop" (RAM) at a time, so it has to swap files from memory to disk over and over until it finishes what you asked it to do. All this back and forth can get very slow, and is usually accompanied by that chunk-a-chunk noise your hard drive makes when its thrashing.
When do I need more RAM?
The more RAM you have, the less your computer has to go back and forth to the hard drive. My personal rule of thumb - you need as much RAM as you can get.
If you don't know the difference between a 32-bit and 64-bit system, you're probably running a 32-bit OS. Which means the maximum amount of memory your system will recognize is 4GB. If you buy more than that you're wasting your money, because anything more than that will simply be ignored. If you're interested, this limitation is imposed by 32-bit versions of Windows to keep poorly written device drivers from crashing your PC when they're handed large memory addresses.
I'm sure you really wanted to know that. Anyway.
Since RAM is (almost) as cheap as dirt these days (about $32 per GB), I would recommend max'ing out at 4GB. To avoid wasting your money, have a friend help you choose memory that's compatible with your system, or buy it maxed out from the get-go (if you're buying a new computer).
Premium memory (with premium pricing) is available with faster access times, but that's mostly a marketing gimmick. Trust me, you won't be able to notice if your memory is a few nanoseconds faster or not. Unlike a hard drive, RAM has no moving parts, so its going to be fast by nature.
When do I need more disk space?
That depends on how much music, pictures, videos, and so forth you have. For the best performance, consider investing in a hard drive with a high RPM (rotations per minute), which is a way of measuring how fast your hard drive can get to a file. 7,000 RPMs is the norm, but a 10,000 RPM drive would be blazing fast, and would really give your computer a speed boost.
Your hard drive will always be the slowest component in your computer. Buying more hard drive space will not improve performance (it will just give you more room for pics). Buying a faster hard drive will. The faster the drive, the less time it will take to find those files and "walk" them to memory. But be careful - fast hard drives are not cheap, and unless you like to edit home movies or do photo retouching you'll probably be just as happy with a 7,000 RPM drive.
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