Notebook Makers Moving to 4 GB Memory As Standard 567
akintayo writes "Digitimes reports that first-tier notebook manufacturers are increasing the standard installed memory from the current 1 GB to 4GB. They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market. The glut is supposedly due to increased manufacturing capacity and the slow adoption of Microsoft's Vista operating system. The proposed move is especially interesting, given that 32-bit Vista and XP cannot access 4 GB of memory. They have a practical 3.1 — 3.3 GB limit. With Vista SP1 it seems that Microsoft has decided to fix the problem by reporting the installed memory rather than the available memory."
Re:Makes me feel old (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fix the problem by misleading the customer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista x64 is the first step to locked-down systems, so it should be boycotted.
Re:That's great (Score:5, Interesting)
How about I stick to what I have now so I don't have to buy an overpriced desktop, and then if Apple decide that I'm allowed to run OS X on something they didn't build, I might consider booting it.
Unlikely, though.
When I bought it, it was same price as a Quad Xeon workstation. I was happy with the G5 Technology (unlike G4-Laptop guys) so I opted in for Quad G5.
What Apple lacks are
1) A complete image fix of iMac series. Even if iMac performs 3x faster than a "Black Box Desktop PC", it won't be taken serious.
2) A mini Tower with 2x more space so they won't be bothering with 5400 RPM HD, integrated Gfx card. I am speaking about a bigger Mac Mini.
For generic PC running OS X? Half of OS X'es power comes from Apple knowing their desktop stuff out there and Taiwan no-name card manufacturers can't manage to get into those machines.
Re:That's great (Score:4, Interesting)
Joe Sixpack benefits from a computer that runs faster, swaps less, and has a shorter boot time. In fact, I'd wager that he gets more benefit from memory than the typical
After I gutted his computer from all excess hardware (modem, spare NIC, etc.), turned off almost every service that wasn't required to boot the computer, and repartitioned his hard disk, was he able to play the game acceptably and not get screwed by alt-tabbing.
So, in short, I agree with you based on experience with "Joe six pack's" computer, and the GP is nuts.
Re:How can windows suck so much... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ubuntu (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's great (Score:4, Interesting)
Now here we are with available system memory growing into the multi GB's for standard desktop/laptops and we find that Microsoft Windows applications are running into upper limit issues. Kinda sound like Microsoft could be getting hit with the results from hard-coding/forcing special data structures into places a cleanly designed OS would not run into.
Or not.
LoB
Still doesn't make sense (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm guessing you are confused because of the Intel Core Duo line that was prominent before Core 2 released. The Intel Core line was released after 64-bit P4s not because of inherent multi-core advantages, but because they realized how the NetBurst architecture was not working out, particularly in low TDP mandated environments like laptops (where they currently were using Pentium-M now, derived from Pentium-III). They released Core in an effort to have a more consistant offering, with lower TDP and better per-clock performance, forsaking 64-bit until Core 2 (except the Xeon family, which stuck with NetBurst until 64-bit was available via Core 2). It had nothing to do with multi-core and would have played out that exact same way if it was just single cores.
No userspace input device drivers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's great (Score:3, Interesting)
Time is money. In most cases, hardware is a lot cheaper than labor.
Re:That's great (Score:4, Interesting)
I would say Microsoft is not ready for 4GB+ memory configurations in consumer devices. It may work in servers, but it's not working on the desktop. Conversely, my wife upgraded her Mac from 1GB to 5GB for Leopard the same day. Her Mac Pro is working flawlessly.
DirectX compatibility maps memory from your video card into the 32bit address space which causes problems with windows. The more RAM your video card has, the less your system can have. Further, there is a bug in Vista that double maps it for DirectX 9 support. There is a patch available for that issue. My PC had an ATI x1900 with 512MB. The system is stable with 3GB but more causes problems. If this can happen with a supported chipset, what happens on other systems?
My motherboard claims to support 8GB of RAM. I tried several different versions of the BIOS. The Vista x64 ultimate installer doesn't even work right with 4GB in. I just decided to go back to XP Pro after that experience. The point of Vista is gone in my book.
Wow, that was blunt (Score:3, Interesting)
In reference to the GP, there are typically two variants of standard Linux kernels available for a x86 system: Default (or similar) and Big, BigSMP, or similar. The SMP stands for Symmetric MultiProcessing (ability to use multiple CPUs, CPU cores, execution paths, etc.) and has been integrated into the Default kernel for some time now. The "big" kernels also support PAE. This is not in the default due, I believe, to the risk that some kernel modules such as drivers don't handle PAE correctly (the Wikipedia page also mentions that PAE-enabled kernels won't run on non-PAE-capable CPUs, though this is hardly a concern on any modern machine).