Why my new laptop has 3GB of RAM

So, I got a new laptop (Acer 5630). The old one gradually accumulated more and more little issues, but the final straw is that both the Wifi and the Ethernet flake out (in different ways) after it's been up for a while.

Some of the reasons for choosing Acer was that there is a good bang/buck ratio and that Acer supplies XP drivers so I can 'downgrade' from Vista to XP which is fantastically quick and runs all the programs I'm used to.

With XP and 3GB or RAM from the factory, I'm not really hurting, but since I use a Virtual image of the laptop the company gave me for remote access (rather than lugging a laptop with me each way everyday) extra memory would be nice.

It gets kinda hairy, but essentially a 32bit OS (there are 64bit versions of XP and Vista, but they're rare) has a maximum numeric limit of bytes it can address/find/talk-to. 2^32 = 4,294,967,296 bytes, but that is not how much RAM Windows can use, once you subtract video RAM (even if it's on the video card, the OS still has to address it) and memory for PCI devices and such, you can pretty much figure on about 3GB as the max RAM that will actually get used.

Think of it like this: your medical computer scan form asks you for your street address and only gives you four boxes for your street number. Most people have street numbers that will fit in there and towns often restart the numbers at the town border, but with urban sprawl, there are more people with addresses like 11635 N Main St.

The 64bit OS's basically give your forms a lot more boxes. The numbers work out to 2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes. This is way more than the national debt, so we're talking a number way too big to visualize.

While there are a number of other reasons to dislike Vista, the big one is that I have a long list of programs I'm used to using on XP and many don't work with Vista. The transition from Vista to Xp is like an alloying speedbump compared to moving from 32bit to 64bit -- moving to 64bit is less like a speedbump and more like a muddy uphill track that requires a 4x4.

I said that 64bit gives you more boxes, but it would be more accurate to say that you still have four boxes, but more things can go into each box. Instead of just having 0-9, it can now have 0-9 AND A-J. So when the 32bit OS tells a program where to find data, it's going to tell it the equivalent of 3205 Main Memory Rd. -- when the same program asks for a data address from a 64bit OS, it could get an address like 01GH Main Memory Rd. If the program isn't expecting 64bit addresses, it will usually gibber briefly and lose it's mind.

The hardware on my laptop limits things too. It only has the standard two memory slots and they max out at 2GB modules. If they release a firmware upgrade that lets them use 4GB or larger modules, I may be tempted to crank up the RAM and put on 64bit linux -- I could use VMware Server to run a virtual copy of my current 32bit windows and start my uphill climb to living in 64bit land.

Still, I like my new laptop :)