In all the time I have been working with Mac’s, one of the most common complaints I have heard is “My Mac is running slow!”.
Now obviously this could be caused by many different things but probably the most common is an insufficient amount of RAM installed.
So your first question might be:
“What is RAM?”
Well put simply, RAM is where your Mac will store data it needs for Applications to run correctly and quickly. The more RAM we have installed, the more Applications we could potentially run simultaneously.
The usual response to this is:
“Well how can I tell how much RAM I have and how much I need?”
Fortunately, there is a very useful Application that will give us this information.
If you navigate to the Applications / Utilities folder on your Mac, at the top you will have an Application named Activity Monitor.
If you launch Activity Monitor the first page will show you details about all the different processes running on your computer. Don’t worry too much about this, it’s the System Memory tab at the bottom we want to look at.
Clicking on System Memory will result in seeing something similar to the above screenshot.
On the right hand side by the Pie Chart, we can see the total amount of RAM installed in the computer (4GB in this case). On the left hand side we can see how much free RAM we have (basically RAM that is currently unused) and how much RAM is being used in total.
If you find you have a very small amount of free RAM, then I would definitely look at getting this upgraded – you will be amazed at the performance benefit you can gain from this!
If you would like to get in touch to discuss your RAM upgrade requirements, feel free to email support@amsys.co.uk to get in touch with our Workshop staff!