To take advantage of the System 7, your Macintosh will require at least two Meg of RAM. This article provides an overview that explains why more RAM will make you and your computer more productive.
What is RAM used for?
Think for a moment about how you work. When you write a letter, the first thing you do is take out a piece of paper from a drawer and place in on your desk. Generally we have a place to store things and a place to work on things. Just as your computer does.
Computers store most information on disks - either floppy or hard disks. When the computer needs a piece of information it takes the information from the disk and places it in it's workspace which is RAM. Only when something is in RAM can the computer work with it.
The size of your workspace or RAM dictates how many tools and how much information you can work with at one time. RAM is measured in megabytes or millions of characters. For instance, the Mac SE shipped with 1 Meg of memory or 1 million characters of memory.
Working with Large Amounts of Information
Whatever you are working on -- a memo, a spreadsheet, a graphic -- takes up space. The larger the item, the more RAM you need.
Like you, the computer uses its workspace to hold the information that it is working with. If you have more information than there is room for, let's say the great American novel you are writing, you either need to break it into small pieces or add more RAM to your computer.
If you want to break it into smaller pieces you might have a different file on your disk for each chapter.
If you want to add more workspace for your computer you would purchase more RAM. The more RAM you have the more text you can work on.
Workspace and Tools and Size.
Today's computer tools -- software programs -- are growing in size. When you have a large software package your computer needs more workspace in order to run the program. The larger programs available today may not run on your computer unless you add more workspace (RAM). If the computer does not have enough RAM to load a program, you have to add more to before it will run.
Working with more than one tools at a time
Often when you are working on something you may have more than one tool out, or more than one source of information at hand. On your desk you may have a calculator, note pad, a pencil and several files. The larger your workspace the more tools and more information you can work with at one time.
When you start using computers you have different tools to manipulate and access different types of information. Depending on the task, you may call on your word processor, database, spreadsheet or E-Mail. If you need information for a report that is in the spreadsheet you have to save your report, call up the spreadsheet, copy the information, quit the spreadsheet, load the report and paste the information into your report. This can all be accomplished faster if your computer has more RAM and can run all of the tools at the same time.
On the Macintosh with more workspace (RAM) you can use Multi-Finder to run more than one program at a time. This means you can be writing the report while running the database in the background. You can switch back and forth between them without going through the slow process of starting and quitting each program. The more RAM you have the more programs you can have running at any given time.
In Summary.
The more RAM you have the larger amounts of information you can work with at one time, the more software packages you can have running and the more productive you and your computer will be.
