[Leaplist] new low end linux computers - and Fuzzy question

[Chris]

Carter Manucy wrote:

>----- "Steve Litt" <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>However, RAM's so cheap now, that if I were to buy a new machine, I'd get at
>>least 2GB.
>>    
>>
>
>Interjection: for those who are not aware, the folks that make RAM ramped up production thinking that Vista was going to fly off the shelf and everyone was going to run out and buy more RAM.
>
>Guess what... it didn't happen.  Now they're selling at losses due to overstock.
>
>Result?  I just bought 1GB of RAM for my wife's laptop for $30.  You can buy 2GB (1Gx2) kits for around $45-50 now.
>
>My time is worth more than $50.  I'd rather have 2G in the box and not have to wait the extra 5 minutes to deal with swapping if I'm using a lot of resources... my laptop often has so many instances of Firefox going, it's using more memory than most folks are claming they're "happy" with.  
>
>Once you get used to being able to not close something to go to something else, you get spoiled.  And that's a good thing... 
>
>-Carter
>
>____________________________
>

It's a balancing act. And that's good. I have a 64m server that
never, ever eat's up all it's ram. I have a laptop with 512m that
I frequently wander into swap-world. What's the difference?
Which one is right?

Both are, and the difference is one of the cool things about Linux.
You can strip it down to the bare minimum of what you need the
box to do. My server has no desktop software. It has no X. The
kernel has been gutted of a lot of stuff I don't need for that box.
And, at 64m, it has more ram than it needs.

My lappy runs a heavy desktop (KDE) and I've frequently got
Firofox open to a dozen tech pages hunting down solutions,
GIMP, etc., etc., I'm shopping for another 512m stick now.

The only correct answer is that you have to figure out what you
want to do, and how much money you have lying around - and
make it all fit. You don't need a Ferrari to drive to the grocery
store on Sundays, and you'll probably really hate using a Geo
Metro to drive from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

Cheers,

Chris
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