[denis_carlin]

My iBook has 512MB (Arrives this week) but I've read how memory hungry Mac Os X is. How much of a difference in normal usage will the above configurations make?
I use office, internet, iTunes, rip Music, DVDs, will do some Video editing later.

Thanks, in advance.
Denis

[macman88]

my ibook came with only 256. i added another 512 about a month after. it made a huge difference. in your case, with already having 512, the jump to 768 will not be much different. if you are not running any ram intensive applications, photoshop, final cut, garage band, then you should be fine. if you are, i would recommend purchasing a 1gb chip. my $.02

[iggyboy2]

I had a 1 ghz with 768 and now have a 1.2 with 1.25 gb of ram. Huge difference. Zippy, very little spinning beachball effect. Yes it is a slightly faster processor, but I think its more to do with the ram than just the .2 ghz

[sminch]

i'm running a 1.2ghz with 768 ram, and see the beachball very rarely, but that said i don't do anything particularly intensive (ie. no photoshop, final cut...). i expect more would help for video editing but aside from that i'd guess that you'll probably be fine with less. then again, if you can get cheap ram you can't go wrong, eh? (make that, if you can get cheap ram that runs well then you can't go wrong, and god knows that a lot of issues people have seem to come from crappy ram).

sminch

[MARINEOSX]

I have a 933Mhz and 1.128 GB of ram. I also do a lot of DVD compressing and I do a little cartoon nothing to intensive but the extra from 640 to what I have know made a difference that I like and feel that it was worth it.

[tae667]

I have iBook 933MHz with 640 MB of ram and I think I see too much swapping in Tiger. I think I'll buy 1GB stick soon...

[Randman]

Video with 512 of ram?

[jamil5454]

Originally Posted by Randman

Video with 512 of ram?

By video editing he could mean simple stuff in iMovie.

[Partisan01]

I have a 1.2 with 768, I had the stock 256 in it for around 5 months without much problem. I have noticed a slight speed increase in specific applications such as Route 66. Everyone hypes RAM upgrades so much around here, I didn't think it was that significant.

[mpancha]

get as much ram as you possibly can, its always the best.

[artaxerxes]

I ran 256 mem for a year which was entirely acceptable for MS office apps, surfing and even MATLAB coding. I recently plonked in an extra 512 in preparation for Tiger. Still under Panther the difference is very pleasing - beachballing is a thing of the past. However it was perfectly useable with 256. No video editing or Garage Band attempted though.

If you are going third party - the Crucial 200 pin SODIMM 2700s are *cheaper* than the 2100 SODIMMS they link in the guaranteed APPLE compatible 2100 SODIMMS. If the 1GB module seems cheap enough go for it... but stick with the 512 for 6 months. Just to enjoy the contrast... and get the maximal saving.

[ChasingApple]

My Clamshell currently is running Tiger with 320MB of ram, speedy over here! Honestly though when I got my iMac G4 1.25Ghz machine last year it came with 256MB, I saw that damn beachball all the time. I upgraded to 512MB and things were better right away. After about a year with 512 I noticed DVD ripping / Decoding etc apps were slow, and caused any other App to beachball from time to time, so I just upgraded it to 768MB total and now the beachballs are all but gone even while encoding / decoding.

Truth is, your system (depending on the software you have / use) will perform differently depending on what ram you have installed. Give it a try with the 512MB and see how it performs, only add memory if you see lots of beachballs and want that snapiness there

For now I am keeping my iBook at 320MB, nothing being run on it is intensive enough to make me shell out $100 to max it to 576MB

[one sick puppy]

IBook G4 1ghz. I had stock 256 to start, was curious about the same question and decided to dump the extra 512 in there and nope, didn't notice much difference. Less beachball, for sure, but certainly not nearly enough to lend truth to the idea that OSX is a memory hog.

With that said, however, the most important thing is what you do with your Mac and how you use it. I use it mainly for text writing (Word 2004), dictionary, World Book 2004. Certainly not memory hungry apps.

I turn my IBook off and on often, so most of my beach ball is from initial loading of applications. I don't see the beachball when the programs are actually loaded.

[ChasingApple]

I must also note that while I saw lots of beachballs in my year of Panther, I have not seen many at all even with only 320MB of ram on my Clamshell with Tiger. Tiger seems to be very very optimized!