I am a fairly computer illiterate senior cit and constantly need help.
At present my laptop is running very slowly. It is Windows EP 2002 and has 248MB RAM.
I have LOTS of photos in My Pictures.
How can I find out just how much space they are taking?
Is there somewhere else better for storing them?
Hopin you can help,
Rosie

Rosie,

It sounds to me like you’re concerned that your pictures in My Pictures are making your computer run slowly. The problem lies not with the pictures stored in your My Pictures folder, but in the fact that you only have 256 MB of RAM (your video card is using 8 MB of RAM, which is why it shows 248 MB available.) I recently explained this to a friend using analogy and I think it worked well, so I’ll try to explain it to you here the same way. Try to think simple.

RAM is like the space on your desk where you do all your work for that day. Access to things in RAM is very fast, like the things on your desk. If you have enough RAM, you can open up a spreadsheet, web browser, music player, email, pictures of your grandkids, and so on, all at the same time. (Unlike your desk, you can’t stack things on top of RAM; once it’s full, it’s FULL.) Similarly, if your desk is large, you can lay out several documents at the same time and still have enough room for your stapler, tape dispenser and telephone. (Try to think of those things as essentials, like your anti-virus and operating system, which are always taking up room on your desk.)

Your HARD DRIVE is like your filing cabinet where you store everything long term. This is where your pictures are all stored, in the My Pictures folder. Your hard drive has a table of contents which makes finding things efficient, but access to it is much slower than RAM. Imagine your filing cabinet is off in the corner of your office. If you wanted to get access to the files stored there, you’d have to cross the room, locate the file in the table of contents, open the drawer with the file in it, then walk back over to your desk to start using the file. As you can see, this takes a lot more time than just having the file on your desk.

Your computer can move things from the desk over to the filing cabinet TEMPORARILY to make room on your desk. This is what’s called Virtual Memory. Virtual Memory uses your hard drive as extra space when your RAM gets too full. But this can make your computer sluggish, since moving things back and forth to the filing cabinet is slow.

Unlike your hard drive, RAM is only temporary storage. Every time you shut down your computer, your RAM gets cleared, as you might clear your desk before you leave the office at night. Your computer puts EVERYTHING into the filing cabinet until you come back in the morning to keep the cleaning lady from swiping your stapler and tape dispenser. (hehe, i crack myself up.)

I hope that part makes sense, because I’m about to build on that analogy.

If your desk is 16×16 inches, you’ve got 256 square inches of Desk Space (aka RAM.) That’s a pretty small desk, which means if you switch between your email and a spreadsheet, your computer will have to put the email program into the filing cabinet (aka Hard Drive) temporarily, then bring the spreadsheet back to your desk for you to work on. If you needed to bring your email back up, it would have to put the spreadsheet back in the filing cabinet and bring your email back to the desk.

If your desk was 32×32 inches (1024 sq. in.,) you could bring the spreadsheet to your desk without putting the email away. If you needed to access the email later, you wouldn’t have to go all the way back to the filing cabinet, since your desk is big enough for both programs. You could also open your web browser or look at pictures of your recent trip to Jamaica without having to put anything away.

Phew!

What I’m trying to say is that you can dramatically improve your laptop’s performance by increasing the amount of RAM. If possible, I’d suggest upgrading to 1024MB (1 Gigabyte) of RAM, but ANY increase will improve performance.

If you’ve got a modern 8 Megapixel digital camera and a Hard Drive with less than 20 GB of storage space, your hard drive might be getting full, which could cause some slowing. You might want to archive some of your photos to CD or DVD. I’d suggest making 2 COPIES and store them in different places, so if one gets warped in the sunlight, you still have another copy. Once you’ve got 2 backups, delete the old pictures off your hard drive to make a bit more room.

There are many other performance tweaks I’d suggest, but this isn’t the forum for that.

I hope I’ve answered your question,

Matt

hi
I have just upgraded my graphics card to play some of the games on my p.c
i keep getting the message windows is running low on virtual memory, i have
768mb of ram the games play ok but are abit sluggish shoud i upgrade the ram or is it prossesor problem? can you help please as i dont want to buy more memory if this is not going to cure it.
many thanks

hi i have just bought a graphics card & windows keeps saying virtual memory to low, the game plays ok but abit sluggish is this not enough memory (i have 768 of ram) or prossesor not fast enough problem can you please help.
many thanks

craig ,

Hi, in regard to your question, the speed of your game’s performance is determined not only by your RAM but your graphic card, Processor, and of course your hard disc (SATA is faster than IDE).

To get rid of sluggish problems, it’s best to have at least this spec

Processor Core 2 duo 2.0 Ghz
RAM DDR 2 @ 2 GB
HDD @ SATA 80GB or 360 GB (Whichever you can afford)
Graphic @ DDrR 2 @ 256 MB