on 11/8/01 10:21 AM, Timpe, Jim at Jim.Timpe@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I'm sure that 1G memory cards are only a matter of months away. I'm sort of
> staring at the same quandary. Current CPU is about maxed out, but spend a K
> on something today, that's tantamount to worthless in a year... It's quite
> a flummoxing situation.
The memory cards prices will continue to drop, and larger sizes will become
more affordable as the technology curve brings bigger densities into full
production. I think most of the cards use 128MB chips, so the large cards
now are more expensive. But 256MB and 1GB chips are less than 2 years out.
These chip sizes will enable 512MB and 1GB cards, at prices similar to what
the 128MB cards cost now. Flash memory (which is what is inside the cards)
is now in a state where production capacity exists for more MB than
worldwide MB demand, so the producers are all dropping the chip prices to
keep their fab lines running (to amortize the $1-$2 billion it costs to set
up a fab nowdays you have to keep it running all the time...). This is a
good thing, as the prices of the little cards will continue to fall in the
future. Don't buy too big now, as it will be cheaper soon.
For working in your computer with large digital files, the best and cheapest
upgrade you can do is to max out your RAM. I went from 128MB to 512MB in my
old Power Computing Mac clone, and it made a dramatic difference in
manipulating files in Photoshop Elements. A rule of thumb for Photoshop is
that you want to have free RAM available of five (5!) times the image file's
size. So if your E10 or E20 or 4040 files are running 15-20MB you want to
have 80-100MB for Photoshop, plus about 30MB for the program itself. I run
Elements in a 330MB memory partition, and it is much better than when I only
had 80MB for it.
RAM is at historically cheap prices nowdays. A local chain here (Fry's
Electronics) is advertising 512MB PC133 DIMM's for under $30... this much
memory a year ago would have been ~$150-200 or more. If you have two or
three DIMM slots, fill them up with the biggest DIMM's you can find. Windows
(all flavors) and MacOS 9 and 10.1 are memory hogs, but they will fly if you
give them 512MB or more. Everything you do runs better, especially the photo
editing programs. To prove this, put back in your old memory, and try the
computer...
--
Jim Brokaw
OM-1's, -2's, -4's, (no -3's yet) and no OM-oney...
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