2GB not enough? Screenshot Inside

[Scottsdale]

You will NEVER be able to upgrade later. It's $99, and that's a bargain for the capabilities and performance boost you will experience when needing more than 2GB RAM. Even if you don't need more than 2GB RAM now, apps and OS X will require more and more RAM over time/upgrades. Just pay that minimal upgrade fee, as you do need it if you plan to use this MBA in the long-term.

 

[1BadMac]

The screen shot didn't show any page outs. Was performance suffering? If not, I'd say the 2GB was fine.

Sure, 4GB is only $100, but if it's just a browsing machine 2GB is plenty sufficient.

 

[ayuchan]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

Just treat the Ram upgrade as if you're buying insurance =p

 

[pfjellman]

chrome opens a new rendering engine every time you open a new tab, the advantage to this is that if one page crashes (Flash) then it doesnt crash the whole browser.

safari does this too, but in a more efficient way. i have flash crashes all the time, usually on blip.tv (day9 ftw) -- the video simply stops playing, is replaced by a black box that says PLUG-IN FAILURE and i get a dialog alert. i can just refresh the page just fine. browser never crashes and all other windows/tabs in safari are fine (even flash sites).

$100 for twice the ram is definitely the way to go. 4GB will not only serve you better while you use the machine, but will bump up the resale value of it that much more when you decide to upgrade in a few years.

 

[bowlerman625]

Get 4GB of Ram. You won't be sorry.

 

[jfulcher]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

Just treat the Ram upgrade as if you're buying insurance =p

Which is always a great deal on something you probably will only own a couple years at the most.

 

[wirelessmacuser]

Another vote for STOP USING CHROME and it all gets better for you....

The fanboys like to go backwards... it's the "cool" thing to do. If their precious MBA with a measly 2GB can't handle it, they point the finger and tell us to just get rid of the problem from EVIL Google...ha...ha...ha...

It's NEVER anything to do with the ever perfect Apple, and everything to do with the "bad guys". Why use new software, especially when it's by the dreaded "Google" Monster...ha..ha...ha...ha... You know, the ones that produce a really great browser that runs like a rocket on my ThinkPad, AND my MacBook Pro, my Mac Pro, and my MacBook Air. What great computers these are.

Who am I to start a thread (talk about guts) and have the fanboys _wail in _pain at the thought of "upgrading" to a massive 4GB of ram. Or get ugly and defensive, arguing why 2GB is so much memory, they can't imagine anyone that could possibly use more, as I did when I ordered my CTO MBA. And why did I go to 4GB? I actually plan to use the thing. I happen to own and enjoy high powered, resource laden Macs.

http://goo.gl/rRbqR

I really enjoyed my 13" 4GB / 256GB equipped MacBook Air till it puked and died. Same with the second one they gave me. So for now I'm patiently waiting for Apple to produce a fix. In the meantime my much loved new 15" i7 / 8GB / SSD equipped MacBook Pro, is running like a dream. Also, you'll notice I'm _not_ bashing Apple, it's a computer... they have bugs... hello? It's brand new, and bugs are normal, experienced users know this. I don't care what brand it is.

I've been using Apple laptops of all kinds since the PowerBook 100 series years ago. Apple does laptops right. I firmly believe the only reason we have the video issues that took down both my MBA's is that Apple is slipping a bit when it comes to quality control. This is an issue so obvious it should have been caught.

Back to the ram issue. Only 2GB ? Hello, check your calendar Mr Jobs, it's 2010.

Instead of following the Apple worshipers and ditching Chrome, how about fleeing the influence of the zealots in the walled garden of control and old tech?

Get 4GB and enjoy the experience I have with Chrome on my 4GB MacBook Air... fast, fast, fast... In fact it's the default browser on all my Macs.

There's nothing better than a Fast Mac running Chrome

Cheers...

 

[tshort]

You are only looking "My Processes". If you show "All Processes", you'll see the "kernel_task", "coreservicesd", "WindowServices", "mds", etc, etc.

This gives you a better view into all your processes.

Get 4GB, you won't regret it.

 

[jimboutilier]

I did an experiment once on a C2D Macbook with 1, 2, 3, and 4gb of ram on Snow leopard using a variety of common OS X apps

1gb always showed a lot of swapping and was pretty sluggish.
2gb reduced swapping a lot and really sped up the machine
3gb made only a slight speed difference and swapping seemed to be almost non existent. this seemed to be a sweet spot.
4gb did not seem to make any speed difference but battery life improved quite a bit so there must have been enough swapping with 3gb to keep the HD spinning more. Not as important for an SSD power wise but may impact longevity and performance.


FWIW

 

[pfjellman]

chrome is a terrible browser -- i can't trust it to meet my stringent privacy requirements, it's slow and laggy (even on my SSD Mac Pro with 8GB RAM), takes way too much CPU and RAM on all the machines i've tested it on, and (this is a personal preference issue) is ugly compared to safari.

just my $0.02. i definitely don't recommend it to anyone!

 

[Dammit Cubs]

i notice people like to open like a BILLION TABS!!! why in gods name do you need that many tabs.

and what's with all the google chrome renderer processes.

 

[treynolds]

Opera?

How is Opera for memory usage? Is it a hog?

TR

 

[ozreth]

Youre screenshot answered your question for you. Even if you arent using over 2gb im sure you are damn close to it.

4gb is just not acceptable these days with the way software is advancing as well as people becoming more and more computer literate and using more demanding applications.

Also, who knows what kind of things you will want to do with it in the future. Just save yourself the restless nights of regret (you can NEVER upgrade the ram) and get 4gb.

 

[KandyKane]

Can someone explain which numbers I should be looking at in the activity monitor?
The used memory or active or???

Thanks

 

[NotAHater]

The fanboys like to go backwards... it's the "cool" thing to do. If their precious MBA with a measly 2GB can't handle it, they point the finger and tell us to just get rid of the problem from EVIL Google...ha...ha...ha...

I'm not a fanboy, and I don't think that by any stretch of the imagination that 2GB is measly. OSX is a great OS that should have no issues running on that amount of memory. The bundled applications don't have any issues running within those confines, the OP showed pretty clearly that his problem is Chrome, which is well known to be a glitchy resource hungry application. I really can't understand why anybody would use it over safari. It isn't as if they really render differently, they both use the webkit engine under the hood, but Safari is just a much better product that's been engineered to run on Apple hardware. There is a reason that Apple works so hard to control the user experience, and that's because they want it to be a good one. I'm pretty sure that Google doesn't care that your system runs like crap. They're used to running on Windows where the entire OS is lousy and users are used to just throwing more hardware at the problem. This is not something we have to deal with, and I really don't believe that Apple would offer a 2GB option if they felt it was inadequate to offer an excellent user experience. Anyway I'll stop rambling, but that's my $0.08 (Inflation for the Apple tax)

 

[altair7]

Glad to hear it! You have to understand that Google and Apple are market competitors, and Google HATES Apple. They want to offer you a product that *looks* good, but it's gonna make your Mac run poorly. And when it does where else can you look? Perhaps at an Android powered device??

This is so absurd that I had to reply. Most Google employees use Macs for their work machines. Not to mention that Google wants you to use their browser. They would not intentionally sabotage the OSX browser because then people would not use their browser.