This article suggests you buy lots of RAM. But, buy your RAM from the same place you bought your computer (or at least the same place you bought your motherboard).

When I add RAM, I bring the motherboard manual with me. There are so many variations on RAM, I advise against buying it from anywhere is not within driving distance--unless you have a vendor who will compete on service instead of price. One machine that I upgraded required me to make 3 trips for 3 different kinds of RAM, until I found one that worked. The trick was this machine would accept only single-sided DIMMs, and not every variation of that style. So don't buy RAM from magazines and don't buy it online unless you really know your RAM.

And now, your tech tips:

How much RAM is enough? Back when RAM cost $45 per megabyte, this was an important question. In those days, wintel computers needed 16 MB to run smoothly, and DOS-only computers needed between about 4 MB. And that is only for basic applications. Add a CAD package, and you're suddenly looking at a massive increase in RAM requirements.

Today, RAM is almost free. It's not unusual for a computer to use 100MB or more, just at idle. If the machine has less RAM than required, it uses "virtual RAM," which it creates on your hard drive. The disadvantages of this are threefold. First, the hard drive runs at about 1,000th of the speed of RAM. Second, reading/writing to a hard drive takes system resources, thus slowing you down and increasing the chances of a system crash. Third, this puts unnecessary wear on your hard drive, and will cause you to lose it prematurely.

How much RAM do you need? Is "need" the right approach?  No. The right approach is to ask how much RAM your machine  can take!  Why? Because each round of software upgrades means more resource demands, especially on RAM. Buy it once, and be done with it. Here is a good strategy:

RAM module types change--get the most advanced RAM packaging that your motherboard can accept. But, make sure it can accept it, before you buy!

Typically, a PentiumX-based machine will have two RAM slots, and each will accept a maximum of 64, 128, 256, 512 MB--or some other value. Always fill a slot to its capacity. This prevents you from having to later throw away RAM just to upgrade a slot that is not filled to its capacity. Thus, you should never buy RAM in increments of less than what your computer can max out on.

There you have it.  Buy RAM intelligently, and you'll enjoy your computer more because it'll run faster, crash less, and last longer.

One final tip: in Windows 9x, NT, 2000, and XP,  you have a pagefile setting. You can find this under Start/Settings/Control Panel/System. There'll be a tab for Performance and a button to change paging size. Always, without exception, set the minimum and maximum to the same size, which should be 2.5 times whatever your total RAM is (you may want to experiment with adjusting this up or down for optimum performance).  

Make this change only AFTER defragmenting your hard drive. I have multiple drives on my main computer, and I have one that is only 1 GB in size. That is where my pagefile resides, with nothing else for it to compete with. This machine really flies!