I just gave a +1 to my netbook's RAM
Running at minimum spec has never been something that is recommended, and the problem with a netbook is that even when you run Windows 7 Starter on it, you’ll be edging close to its minimum spec mainly because a lot of netbooks come with a weak processor, even lesser graphics processor and mostly because of it having merely 1GB worth of RAM. However, even if you are not doing process-intensive stuff on it, you’ll find that a netbook has significantly higher load times than a cheap notebook.
Yesterday, I upgraded my netbook to a 2GB DDR3 RAM and it made all the difference. From having frequent intermittent cursor hanging instances to having the hard drive activity light on constantly, it completely changed into something that runs so much smoother – only one cursor hang in the eight hours of usage, and a lot faster load times when it comes to heavy programs such as Firefox, one of the heaviest browsers out there, and Adobe Photoshop CS2. In average, I’d say that I cut load times by a third, and frustrations by three quarters. The $18 2GB RAM was the exilir of life necessary to give the netbook a big, exponentially beneficial boost of performance.
When it comes to gaming, load times have been cut down, though frame rates remain more or less the same as the bottleneck lies in the Intel GMA rather than the RAM, especially with regards to older games that are configured for less than 1GB RAM. From having the RAM filled up to 70% on idle, it has now gone down to 50 – 60%.
A little caveat before you go out and buy RAM though – Windows 7 Starter has put a 2GB limit on RAM, so don’t head out and buy 4GB worth of it. In addition to not being able to use 4GB RAM on a wide range of netbook hardware, even if you could, Windows 7 Starter would just disallow access to the extra 2GB. Now you wonder why Intel made certain Atoms 64-bit capable…
I previously made a video on how you can replace the RAM on a HP Mini 110-3500, which should be similar to the HP Mini 210, since both are built on a screwdriver-less chassis.
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Eh, how come i recall selling u the RAM with only 1 row of chips, and this has 2?