[oxband]

So, I've been trying to figure out of I should get more memory from my computer.

this is my hardware. It's a 17" MBP i bought two years ago. i've been using Final Cut Pro a lot lately and it's been slow then. tonight, while using Compressor, it got super slow. I've been thinking of upgrading to 8GB of RAM thinking this might solve my problems. That said, I'm not sure how to read memory specs and make sense of them. hopefully some people here will. Any idea why it is slow? Should I get more RAM? I see OS X 10.6.7

This is my hardware.
Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,2
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP52.008E.B05
SMC Version (system): 1.42f4
Serial Number (system): 73936002ANE
Hardware UUID: C6B9FF1A-F420-5843-B7FE-C706ABE747A9
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

Since i cant provide attachements with screen shots of my Activity Monitor when it was sluggish, I can add some info. I took tow screen shots. In one. I had
VM Size: 169.90
Page Ins: 54.17 GB
Page Outs: 5.15 GB
Swap Used: 2.20 GB

in the other screen shot I took when it was screwy, I had:
VM Size: 168.20
Page Ins: 54.31 GB
Page Outs: 5.26 GB
Swap Used: 2.53 GB

Any advice?

[chabig]

Your Page Ins and Page Outs look really high to me. Spend $80 to go to 8GB.

[oxband]

cool. ill do that. quick question: i ran the circuit memory test on my mac, and it said my model has two memory slots, and that i cant just buy 4gb supplement but that i need to replace them entirely. im gonna buy this. That said, I just want to make sure I'm doing this right. Am I?

[chabig]

That's the right memory. You link is broken but I think you're paying $74 for the whole 8GB. It will completely replace the two DIMMs that are already in your machine. You can give those away, sell them, or take them to Staples or Office Depot for recycling.

[oxband]

I found the exact same product on Amazon's website for 15 keeper so I'm just going to go with that.

Any chance you can give a quick explanation of what Page Ins and Page Outs means?

thanks!

[chabig]

Apple explains it better than I could, but generally it's a measure of how much data has been swapped between memory and the hard drive virtual memory backing store, which happens when your RAM is full. Adding RAM will reduce the need for swapping.

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor