John'z PC Hut

The hard disk or hard drive is an internal storage device which holds programs and data used by your computer.

A box about the size of a VHS video cassette (about 1 inch shorter) containing magnetically coated disks. These disks can hold massive amounts of information.

Hard drives are used to store your software programs and information created from them. Imagine it being a giant filing cabinet inside of your computer, holding all your information.

The benefits of this, is that you can permanently store all of your software programs such as:

• word processors
• spreadsheets
• Games (yeah!)

Learn more about hard drives…

This board sits inside of your computer case, it is what many of your other computer devices plug into. It is called “main” or “mother” board because most of your computer’s devices (CPU, Memory Chips, Video Card and Modem) plug directly into it.

Devices such as the ones mentioned above plug directly unto the motherboard via expansion slots.

All signals used by the computer are processed by the motherboard. Memory chips, the central processor, expansion boards and cables to disk drives all attach to the motherboard. Click here to learn more about motherbaords…

Question:

If I add more Random Access Memory (RAM) To My Computer, Will It Run Faster?

Answer:

Yes and No… One of the best upgrades you can perform on your computer is adding extra memory (RAM). Especially if it is RAM starved, of course whether your computer is RAM starved depends upon your operating system. But hold that thought… We will address how much RAM is needed in the next section.

Yes adding RAM will normally cause your computer to run and feel faster but only up to a certain point. PC experts claim that increasing your RAM from 64Megabyte(MB) to 128MB will give you about a 50 percent boost in performance.

So why not just continue to add more RAM? Well, for starters how much RAM you can add is going to be dependent on the capabilities of your computer. Some computers (older ones) will not be able to handle more that 512MB of RAM. This is because older system boards (motherboard) and the Basic Input Output Systems (BIOS) were not written to accommodate more than 512MB of RAM. Many newer computers can handle up to and more than 1Gigabyte (GB).

Yes it is true that you can expect about a 50percent performance gain when you go from 64MB to 128MB. However, there is a drop off after that, increasing your RAM from 128 to 256MB or 512MB will not yield a 50 or 100 percent increase. It will give you some improvement but not at those levels.

So how much RAM is enough… If you are running Windows 95 or 98, you can probably survive on as little as 64MB of RAM, though your computer may respond somewhat sluggish.

However, if you are using one of the newer operating systems such as Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you need at least 128MB of RAM for the operating system to install, it is the bare minimum.

But understand this, after using 2000 and XP for some time; you will realize that it is not nearly enough. 128MB of RAM will have you pulling out your hair (if you have hair, I don’t) after opening a few applications such as a word processing or your favorite spreadsheet program. To truly optimize Windows 2000 and XP, I recommend at least 512MB of RAM more if you can afford it…

Note: Vista requires at least 1 Gigabyte of RAM for normal operation…

From Johnzpchut