You should just open up Task Manager, switch to the Performance tab, and there's a meter for how much memory your processes are using. If it's near 100%, then more memory won't hurt. That doesn't mean you'll see a big performance difference if you add memory, some programs will allocate more than they need if they see the available memory, but it's a good quick and dirty test.

Memory prices have gone up recently (a gig still isn't real expensive), and if it's not DDR3 memory they aren't real likely to come down again since the DDR2 and DDR memory supply will shrink. Not that'll probably get real expensive.

When I have a link to an image, and the file name is followed by a colon and a number, is that somehow specifying the size of the image? And can someone tell me what search terms I should use to find information about this?

For example:

(a class="thickbox" href="/blah/blah/blah.jpg:900w")

The only thing that occurs to me is that the blah URL is redirecting to a script which takes the 900w as a parameter, as well as blah.jpg. My provocateuse sites have what look like paths but are really script parameters: [link] is passing jonathan_rhys_meyers and 94 to the script named show. There aren't any subdirectories off the root.

Doesn't the colon with the 900 mean use port 900 instead of 80? Of course that wouldn't explain the 'w'....

The inclusion of an alphabetical character made me think parameter, but now I'm wondering how a browser parses that.

Okay, I'm going to dub this "beyond my pay grade" and not spend and more time trying to figure it out. The developers can explain it to me if they decide they need to. Thanks.

This is a laptop using DDR1 memory. Not that cheap to upgrade. Downloaded smart defrag and CCleaner and was shocked by how much they improved performance over the regclean and defrag that comes with XP.

This just gave me a geekgasm: Keystick keyboard folds up like a Japanese fan

We could use a good portable keyboard, and designers Yoonsang Kim & Eunsung Park might have a solution with Keystick. It's a full-size keyboard in its unfurled form, but then it collapses like an accordion into a nice compact package when it's time to hit the road. If this were small enough, it might be even better than that excellent Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard we reviewed.

My Verizon Wireless 2 year contract expired and I'm thinking about getting an iPhone. A couple of questions:

1. I keep hearing about the crappiness of AT&T service in general in terms of coverage. Just how crappy is it? Is it a deal breaker?

2. What do you lose by buying a refurbished iPhone (which is $50 cheaper) compared to a regular one?

ETA: OK, I got that wrong. Checked my plan and I'm apparently subscribed to this thing called "New Every Two", where you can upgrade to new phone every two years. I have 3 months more to go until the next upgrade point. But my *original* 2 year contact was years ago (I had this number for about 8 years). If I switched to iPhone now, would I be penalized in any way?

I don't love AT&T, but don't hate it either. It has better national coverage than T-Mobile by a lot, but not as good as Verizon. This has affected me in exactly one place, a deep suburb of Burlington, VT, and even there I got service upstairs, just not on the first floor. I don't love their service, but haven't been burned now that I'm on an iPhone plan like I did when their data plans were more confusing (and expensive), and haven't heard great things about Verizon's service either, so whatever.

In the middle of NYC, where I am, the data speeds on the iPhone are often pretty slow, and I get a decent number of dropped calls. I don't let it bother me, and it's never kept me from getting things done I need to get done. If you talk on the phone a lot for highly important things, I'd say stick with Verizon. Otherwise, the iPhone is pretty sweet.

(However, you might also want to check out the Droid since you're already on Verizon. Apparently, despite the terrible advertising for it, it's a pretty darn good phone. See this link: [link] . If I were not already on AT&T, I would probably go for this phone.)