By: Eugene Reyes

Between 64 Megabytes and 128 MB of Random Access Memory (aka RAM) is fine for most end-user systems.

Running Windows 95/98 or even Windows NT in a 32 MB system is painfully slow. When memory is low, the operating system “swaps” programs and data from memory (which is really fast) to the hard disk (which is really slow).  Switching from program to program takes several seconds, which isn’t as trivial as it sounds.  A 32MB does not offer true savings.

At 64 MB RAM, you’ll have acceptable performance on Windows 95/98 if users are only juggling a few programs and aren’t handling huge documents or spreadsheets, or manipulating light graphics files using tools like PhotoShop or PhotoPaint.  Moving up to 96 MB RAM will make a noticeable difference.

For ordinary users, the performance difference between 96 MB and 128 MB RAM is very minimal.  However, if you use (or plan to upgrade to) Windows 2000 later on, the more RAM, the better.

If you are running many applications under Windows 95/98, or using Windows NT or the new Windows 2000, 64 MB RAM is really too little.  96 MB is adequate, but I recommend 128 MB RAM for now.  Unless a user’s doing heavy desktop publishing, video editing, or computer-aided design, I would rarely go beyond 128 MB RAM for a desktop PC.

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