Stunthusband,

the power of gmail search. here's the company:

[link]

The reason I'm reccing against netbooks is not because they won't work well. Odds are they will. But every source I've seen says the hardware is crap quality and won't last. And indeed my last netbook died after two years. I got another one anyway because it was the cheapest immediate option, and I hope to have more money by the time this one dies.

You can indeed run 2003 on a mac. But what I'm not sure of is if you can use discs containing a version desgined for the PC. I guess you can an intel window for that.

In terms of the laptops. Very standard for stuff to come with 4 Gig of Ram in W7. Two things. One I've heard that even today 6 Gig vs. 4 Gig makes a huge difference in speed on W7. The other is that Microsoft OS's tend to bloat as they get patched. As do all brands of browser and video standards and so on. So If I was getting a new W7 PC and was not desperately poor and tended to hang on to my PCs for a long time I would spring for Gig Meg of Ram. Most of your speed gain now comes from the upgrade to 6, but the last 2 is good insurance for the future. A machine bundled with 4 Gig of Ram can probably be upgraded to 8, but check. Something in the price range Gud linked or not too far above it will take an upgrade to 8 Gig.

Thanks. This is all useful information since I'm pretty well ignorant on the subject. I mean, I know enough not to get completely scammed at the store, but that's about it.

My home computer has 8 GB of Ram and my work computer has 4 GB of Ram and once applications open (my home computer has a SSD so comparisons are unfair) I don't notice any particular speed difference despite my home computer having a faster processor as well as double the memory (excepting things like big compiles and transcoding that really tax the processor). Typically I have 4 - 6 applications open.

In terms of memory, what I see on the Internet is a lot on these lines:

[link]

What is seems is not so much absolute performance, as avoiding some of those occasional annoying pauses where you open one mor window or do a spell check and everything stops for a bit while the computer thinks. That you experience is different is an important data point though.

Hah! Apparently I have 2 GB of RAM at work, god only knows what at home.

Do you have windows 7. G Gig is plenty for XP. In fact 1 Gig works well for XP.

I think I have XP in both places. I also still have Office 2003 here at work so that's why I'm less concerned about upgrading that at home.

Random question: Anyone ever pay attention to the archive bit? (Not sure what that's called in OS X and other *nix systems.)

Back in olden days, the archive bit would get turned on if a file was modified. Then when the file was backed up, the archive bit would be turned back off.

I just noticed that on one of our client's servers, the archive bit is never turned off, but on another, similar server it gets turned off every night during the backup. So apparently some backup programs still use it.

You can see the archive bit in Windows Explorer if you have it set to show file attributes.

I'm typing on my new computer AIFG (well, not yet great since I'm not used to these new-fangled keyboards, but there wasn't much choice about that)!