A:  It depends. Generally speaking,  the addition of RAM will make your computer faster because most consumer-level computers are sold to minimize cost, and thus come with a minimum amount of RAM.  Here are some general guidelines:

1. If you have Windows  XP or Windows Vista  and you are doing anything more than basic email and internet browsing, then I recommend running your machine with a total of 4GB of RAM.  Windows XP and Vista max out at 4GB of RAM (technically this statement is only true for the 32-bit version but if you don’t know which version of Windows XP or Vista that you have, then the odds are that you have a 32-bit version).  RAM is not that expensive these days so maxing your machine out to 4GB is cost effective and productive.  You will most likely see a difference in your machine’s performance, especially if you are doing any kind of work with digital photography, music or graphics

2. Those of you with Windows 7 face a different dilemma.  Most new consumer machines are running Windows 7 64-bit (recall Windows 7 comes in a 32-bit and a 64-bit version).

The major advantage of Windows 7 64-bit is that you can now add more RAM than the traditional 4GB Windows XP/Vista barrier (see #1 above).  The question is “do you need it?”.

If you are doing basic email or internet work it probably pays to bring your computer up to 4GB of RAM, as Windows 7 is a memory intensive operating system and certain features will perform better with more RAM (e.g. Aero — though Aero performance is also contingent on your video card, as well).  Past that you probably won’t see a difference.

Now if you are doing more than the basics — digital photography, video editing, or gaming, it pays to bring the machine up to more than 4GB or RAM.  8GB of RAM is usually a good starting point, but it makes sense to look at the software you are using to see if the program can use this extra RAM.  For example, while Photoshop is a program that will benefit from having lots of RAM, the 32-bit version of Photoshop in Windows 7 won’t be able to use this RAM — only 64-bit versions of software will be able to use the extra RAM.  So if you are going to add RAM past the 4GB mark, take the time to speak to the manufacturer of the software you are using to make sure that a) the software can take advantage of the extra RAM and 2) that you have the correct version of the software to do so.

1) increase the performance of a single, memory intensive program (like Photoshop or AutoCad)

2) increase the speed of your computer when running multiple applications or programs.

It’s important not to confuse the memory I’m talking about now — also known as RAM — with Hard Drive storage space.  Some people talk about “hard drive memory” but there really not talking about hard drive memory at all — there’s no such thing. What they are speaking about is the storage space on their hard drive.  The reason that people use the term “memory” when discussing RAM (which I’m talking about in this article) vs. Hard Drive space is because they are both measured in Gigabytes or GB.

Memory or Memory
One of the easiest ways to know the difference when someone is speaking of RAM (memory) vs hard drive space is to look at the numbers they are using.  When people talk about memory they are usually taking about 1GB, 2GB, 3GB, 4GB, 6Gb (rarely) 8GB or 16GB. When people are talking about hard drive space, the number are much larger — 160GB, 250GB, 500GB, 1000GB (which is a terabyte, or 1TB).

Will it Make a Difference?
Before you invest in more memory (which I’ll call RAM from now on), it’s important to see if it will make a difference. If you are only browsing the web and doing light tasks such as email and basic word processing, you may not see a large increase in performance by adding RAM. However, you should know that at this time you should be running with at least 2GB of RAM for Windows XP and OS X, 3GB of RAM for Windows Vista and Windows 7.

What’s the Maximum Amount of RAM I can Add?
The answer to this question is based on two factors. The first is dependent upon the maximum amount of RAM your operating system can handle (e.g. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7) and the second is based upon the maximum amount of RAM your computer can support.

The easiest thing to do first is to see what operating system you are running and find out the maximum amount of RAM that the OS can support. Windows XP and Windows Vista each can support up to a maximum of 4GB of RAM (technically this assumes you have the 32-bit version of XP or Vista. There are 64-bit versions of XP and Vista out there but if you have one of them then you don’t need this article). Windows 7 is a different story. Windows 7 comes in two flavors: a 32-bit edition which supports a Maximum of 4GB or RAM, and a 64-bit version which supports more than 4GB of RAM. You can easily tell which version of Windows 7 you have (32-bit or 64-bit) by going to START->Control Panel->System.  In the “System” section about halfway down the screen you will see a “System Type” property which will tell you if the computer is a 32 or 64-bit system.

Once you know the maximum amount of RAM your OS can support, you can now look to your computer to see how much memory your physical computer hardware can support.  Finding this information out is usually as easy as looking in the manual.  However, sometimes the manual isn’t always handy and you need another way.  One of the best places I’ve found not only to buy RAM but to lookup how much RAM (and what type) of RAM your computer can support is at crucial.com.  If you use their wizard you can look up your system in their database and you will be able to find out how much RAM your system can hold and what type of RAM you need that is compatible with your system. (more on the type of RAM in a minute).

Obviously you cannot install more RAM than your system can support — even though Windows 7 64-bit can handle more than 4GB of  RAM, if your computer doesn’t support more than 4GB of RAM then you are wasting your time and money.

Types of RAM
For the purposes of this discussion I’m not going to get into the different types of RAM — there are many different types and speeds of RAM and that discussion is beyond the scope of this article.  Just know that usually a system can take a few different types of RAM and Crucial should be able to tell you what type of RAM your computer can support.  If you have any questions look in the manual that came with your machine — there should be a section about upgrading the RAM and it will get into specifics about what type of RAM you can use.  If all else fails, call or email the tech support of your computer maker and given the model number (or serial number) they should be able to tell you exactly what you need).  To give you an idea of the types (and don’t worry about this stuff — it’s here so you can recognize the terms when you see them), there’s DDR2, DDR3, ECC, NON-ECC and there are a variety of speeds in MHz.

Other Considerations
A final thing to consider is the amount of RAM you have already installed and the slots you have available in your machine to add RAM. Most machines will come with two or four slots that are available to install RAM. But consider that if you are going to add new RAM modules, you may have to remove old ones to make room. For example, if you have a computer that has two RAM slots, and each slot already has 1GB, if you want to upgrade to 4GB of RAM, you’d need to remove both existing 1GB modules and replace them with two new 2GB modules. If however, you only wanted to upgrade to a total of 3GB of RAM in the same situation, you could remove one of the existing RAM modules, and then add a new 2GB module. This would put you at a total of 3GB (the original 1GB module in the first slot, and the new 2GB module in the second slot). Fortunately, Crucial.com will also often tell you how many RAM slots your machine has and sometimes will even tell you about the default factory RAM configuration,

Adding RAM is one of the best and least expensive things you can do to speed up your computer and increase your computer’s performance (note that as of this writing Apple requires that you use Apple-branded RAM to keep within the bounds of their warranty). I hope this article sheds some light on the memory upgrade process.

Let’s assume you have a 100GB physical hard drive.  Most of you have drives that are 250GB or more (drives this large usually come with new machines) — and I’ve been partitioning drives as small as 5GB for a long time – so 100GB is a good round number to work with.

First I create an operating system partition. A C: drive that has around 20GB of space.  This partition serves to hold the operating system (Windows) only, as wells as the files that are associated with Windows.   There will be some exceptions — for example, Internet Explorer cannot be moved from the C: drive so there’s no point trying.  Also, certain program are happier running from C: (e.g. I let my WAMP server run off the C: drive), but for the most part I only leave the OS on the C: drive. By creating this C: drive as a 20GB partition, you are leaving plenty of space of the OS to run (hopefully you have plenty of RAM so you won’t need the hard drive space for performance), as well as room for the OS to grow with all of the updates and patches that are needed for a healthy Windows installation.

The next partition I create is the D: drive.  This is the drive that will contain all of your program files.  I usually create a 20GB partition for this drive though your individual size depends on what software you install. Adobe Creative Suite takes up a ton of space — Firefox doesn’t.

So at this point you have a C: drive that is reserved for the OS only (for the most part) and a D: drive that’s reserved for Program Files.  The first two benefits you will see at this point are that (1) your OS is separate from your program files so things will feel more organized and (2) you’ve saved yourself a ton of backup space.  And in case you are wondering, you’ve saved backup space because you don”t generally need to backup your OS (C) or your Program Files (D) because if you reinstall your operating system you will need to use the Windows disk to reinstall Windows, and you will need to reinstall all of your program files to this new install of Windows.  You’ll appreciate this more as we talk about your data drive(s) next.

The next partition I have is an E: drive that I use for MyDocuments and iTunes.  This is generally the largest partition that I have.  In our 100GB example here, let’s take the remaining 60GB and make it into our E: data drive.  On this data drive I will store the contents of MyDocuments (which as you will recall includes MyMusic, MyVideos, and MyPictures and more).    By having this E: drive setup as to be holding all of your data, you can easily backup this E: drive only to make sure you have a copy of all of your important files.  At this point, however, you must get into the habit of saving your data on the E: drive and make sure your all of your programs store the data on this E: drive.  The only exception to this setup on my machine is the /www directory that’s there as a part of wampserver, which is happiest having everything on the C:  drive.  So I know that when I run my backups that I include C:/…/www.

Note now that if you did need to reinstall windows, you’d be able to reinstall it on the C: drive, (you’d still have to reformat the D: drive to reinstall all of your programs) but your E: data drive would remain intact.  Note that depending upon your installation of Windows and your media, you may NOT be able to install Windows without reformatting the entire drive.  For example, many recovery DVDs that come with a new computer will reformat your entire drive and also DESTROY and partitions you had previously made.  So if you do reinstall the OS, make sure that you backup your data first — just in case your reinstall process truly reverts to factory settings.  But now backing up your data is easy because it’s all on the E: drive.

Advanced Partitioning

Now while the basic scheme above works well  for many people, you can break things down more as you need.  In my case, I split the E: drive even further.  On the E: (data) partition I store the MyDocuments folder that includes MyPictures and the rest of my regular data.  But because my iTunes library is huge, I have a separate partition, an F: drive that I use for media.  One of the reasons for this separation is that I don’t need to backup my music library as often as I backup my everyday data.  Also, note that the more data and files that you backup in a backup (or a mirror or a sync operation) the longer the process will take.  So if I’m just backing up my E: data drive, there’s no reason for my mirroring program (syncback) to have to copy over (and check the sync status of) thousands and thousands of music files.  So it makes sense to separate out data partitions based on the frequency of your backups.  And as it were, I personally keep an additional partition solely for virtual machines.  Because VM files are gigantic, it makes no sense to have to include them in a sync process unless you need to.

Planning Partitions

The best way to setup partitions is with a clean install, but as you may not always have a clean install in front of you, you may elect to partition an existing system.  When you partition an existing system — before you do anything else — make sure you backup your data.   I usually will install the OS first, load the partitioning software, and then create my partitions.  But if you are partitioning an existing setup, MAKE SURE you leave the OS drive (e.g. the C: drive in the above example) with plenty of room.  In fact — OVERESTIMATE.  You do not want to be in a situation where you have a partitioned drive/system and you run out of space on the OS drive.  You can get out of this mess but it’s better not to be there in the first place.

Partitioning Software

For many, many years I was a big fan of Symantec (Norton) Partition Magic.  The software was (is) reasonably priced and (unlike much of Norton’s newer products) has never failed me.   In my travels, however, I came across a free partitioning utility that I really like.  The program is the EASUS Partition Master Home Edition, and I’ve found it to be a worth replacement for Partition Magic (sorry Symantec).   I’ve used the program with Windows Vista and Windows 7 and I have had success.

In this article I introduced you to the world of partitioning and reviewed some of the advantages of having a partitioned system.   Remember that whenever you partition a drive, however, you may lose data.  So be sure to BACKUP you system prior to performing partition operatiosn.

The program is free, loads quickly, and has an interface that puts all of the controls at your fingertips.  At first the program can be overwhelming because there are a myriad of options and ways you can manipulate your file names.  The program has a left side windows-explorer type tree-view, and a right side display of the files in the directory that’s selected in the left panel.  Below these two windows sits the configuration options.  You can use RegEx patterns, replacements, and case changes.  You can remove characters that are “n” places in, or add characters that are “n” places in (or both!).  In addition, you can also add numbering to the files and you can easily add prefixes and suffixes.

One of the best features of the program (in addition to its intended purpose) is the ability for you to preview the changes you are planning to make to your file(s).  If you have the file selected and make a change to the name, you’ll see a preview of that change so you can check your work prior to changing all of your file names (though if you make a mistake you can just use the program to correct the names back to what they were).

In summary, Bulk Rename Utility is an integral part of my iTunes workflow and should be considered by anyone who needs to manipulate large numbers of file names.

1. First you should know that the $79.99 Roku Player (the Roku SD) does not allow you to take advantage of Netflix’s HD content.  I was ready to roll at this low price of $80 until I realized that I wouldn’t be able to watch HD Netflix content unless I purchased the $100 Roku HD.  Fine. $20 isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things and since HD make a world of difference, I plannned to go for the Roku HD.   Note that the only difference I can see between the Roku HD and the Roku HD XR is the fact that the XR model has wireless-N.  I do not believe that $30 is worth it to add wireless-N (and as it turns out with my Insignia NS-WBRDVD which currently runs on my wireless G network does a superb job for Netflix — so no need to go with wireless-N for this purpose).  So at this point I was ready to purchase the $100 Roku HD player.

2. Until I read the reviews…..Looking on the Roku site, the reviews for all three Roku products were overwhelmingly positive.  AMAZINGLY, the average review for ALL THREE products was 4.4.  And taking a look at the reviews, all of the responses are very similar and I didn’t see negative comments.  That was a red light for me — any company that has a product with what are basically 100% positive reviews causes me to raise an eyebrow.  Take a look for yourself – scroll down and look at the product titles — under them you will see the rankings and you can click to read the reviews.

To get what I believed to be a more accurate review and headed to Amazon.com.  I was very disappointed to see what I found.  The basic gist of the matter was that if you received the product and it worked right out of the box, then you would be in good shape with a great product.  The problem was that if you had a problem with the device, wanted to return the product under the money-back guarantee, or just had a technical problem, that the company’s support was non-existent.  Thus, there were a bulk of reviews in the 4-5 star range, but also a bulge of reviews in the 1 star range, too.

At this point I had a choice to make:  should I spend $100 and roll the dice  that it may cost me a few hours of my life straightening things out if there were a problem with the Roku, or should I spend $180 on the Insignia Blu-Ray Netflix enabled player.    No question — Insignia hands down. So while I never actually owned a Roku player, their customer service reputation preceded them.  I elected to go with the Best Buy Insignia product instead, where if I had a problem, getting a new unit would be as simple as driving down the road to the store…

A: This is a question I’m often asked, and unless you are a computer enthusiast, I’d try to do everything you can to stick with the 32-bit version of an operating system (such as Windows 7 or Windows Vista).

First I’ll mention that the difference between a 32-bit and 64-bit operating system, grossly oversimplified, is that a 64-bit operating system can do things more efficiently than a 32-bit operating system. There are many caveats to this statement, the most important one being that the average user, using relatively new computer, will never be able to tell the difference. One of the big advantages of a 64-bit operating system is that a 64-bit OS can access more than 4GB of RAM, which is something 32-bit OS’s can’t do (e.g. Windows XP* [*Windows XP does have a 64-bit version but you'll never see it commercially]).

Let’s talk about why you should NOT rush get a 64-bit OS.

1. Compatibility. Because 64-bit OS’s haven’t really taken off yet, there are many peripherials that don’t have 64-bit drivers. Practically speaking, this means that if you have a multifunction scanner, printer, fax, you have to make sure that the manufacturer has a 64-bit driver or you may not be able to use all the features of your multifunction device.

2. Software. Software must specifically be written for a 64-bit OS. Many newer mainstream programs (e.g. Micorosft products) do have 64-bit versions. The problem is that if your old machine was running an older version of Microsoft Office, the older version many not run on a 64-bit OS and you will now have to purchase a new version of Office. That’s fine if this expense were in your budget, but what happens if you have 4 or 5 programs like this — older ones that were working just fine on your XP machine that you really don’t want to change?

3. The RAM Factor. Some people ask, “But if a 64-bit Windows can use more RAM than Windows XP, isn’t that better?” The answer to that question is yes — if you are encoding mult-gigabyte video files or are using AutoCad with tremendous files, as well. Your average user using Microsoft Word or Excel while browsing the internet isn’t going to be able to take advantage of this increase in RAM. The problem is that the software either hasn’t caught up to the hardware, or has no need to use that much RAM. Think of it like your car — you car has a 120mph marker on the speedometer, but have you ever hit it? Have you ever really needed to go over 75mph on the highway? So while you car can hit 120, it will never use that potential because you will never be in the situation where 120mph is needed.

I’ll close by saying that many computer manufacturers are only showing their home users and home office users 64-bit OS machines. To get around this limitation, look in the small business section and you will see an array of 32-bit machines that you can purchase.

Visit the forum at www.helpspa.com/forum.

The home page has changed as well, as the home page now shows our two featured posts as well as a listing of the most recent post in our major categories. The fonts throughout the site have also been changed in order to improve usability and readability, and our social bookmarking quick links have been moved to a more accessible area. We also added a more prominent signup box for our monthly newsletter, in which you will find terrific computer tips, tricks, advice, and a list of our newest articles.

In all, we really like our new look and we hope that you do too. Let us know what you think — we’re happy to hear from you.

Digging a little deeper, you can look at the Windows Task Manager, under the Performance tab.  Here you will see a listing for Kernel Memory.

1. Download Windows XPSP2 from Microsoft.

2. Create a destination folder for the files. I’ll call it F:\SP2_Files.

3. Head to the command prompt and run the service pack  .exe file with the -x extension (and replace F:\downloads with the location of your .exe file):

F:\downloads\WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe -x

3. A dialog box will appear asking you to “Choose Directory For Extracted Files”. Enter the directory you created earlier in Step 2 (e.g F:\SP2_Files).  The files will now be extracted to the selected directory.

4. Burn the files to a CD or DVD. Make sure that when you are copying you show hidden files so that all of the files are copied to the CD.