Which size of hard drive/RAM should I get?

Question

I am thinking of buying the pink Hi Grade Celeron M-439 laptop, which comes with Windows Vista, but it comes in different Hard drive sizes.. i don't understand any of the Gb, RAM stuff.. But one is a 60Gb Hard drive with 1.73Ghz. 512Mb DDR RAM.. And another is a 80Gb Hard drive with 1.73Ghz. 1Gb RAM.. I don't know if this affects the memory or not but, I would like wireless internet installed on it, I will be using it for school work etc., and will have quite a lot of music and photo's on it...

Answer 1

A Hard Drive and the RAM are two separated things.

Hard Drive is for storage space. It is measured in GB's.
1 GB = 1024 MB's.
Computer info and files are stored in bytes. A million bytes is called megabytes or MB. A billion is gigabytes or GB's.

The operating system (Vista or XP) is kept on the hard drive with whatever files and programs you have.
If you plan on storing, videos, movies, or anything like that you need a bigger hard drive. I know people who have filled up 500 GB's with movies.

However, most people just have a few movies, songs and music, pictures, and homework. Movies can take up 500 MB to 1 GB each depending on the length, quality etc... Songs take up alot less, maybe between 2 to 6 MB's each. Pictures can be very small, 1/2 MB size, or large like 3 MB's size each. Homework like essays or papers take up very little space like 1/10 or 1/3 MB's. Howwver, if you put a picture into your essay it take up more space.

My laptop has a 100 GB hard drive and I have filled 60 of it so far. There are over 2100 songs which are using up 9 GB's of space. I have 69 South Park episodes which use up 7 GB's of space. I also have 5 movies which take up another 3.5 GB's of space. My pictures usually take up about 1/2 a mb each. I have 130 pics which take up only 64 MB's. If you don't plan on saving any movies, episodes, tv shows, or videos, than the 60 will probably be fine.

The RAM is what the computer uses to work with programs.
When you start a program like Vista or XP it comes off of the hard drive and into RAM. When you start internet explorer it comes from the Hard Drive and put into RAM. When you start typing a paper or essay its typed into RAM. RAM does not store things. When you turn the computer off, the RAM does not have any power and all of your info is lost. When you save stuff, it puts the info from RAM back onto the hard drive.

When a program is running it is put into RAM. Each program you have running is using some of the RAM. If you have alot of progams running like media player, internet explorer, microsoft word, and any others your computer may slow down because there may not be enough RAM for all the programs.

The problem is Vista needs a lot of RAM to work. If you don't have enough your computer will run slow. If you get Vista Home Premium I would recommend 2 GB's of RAM. Vista Home Basic doesn't need as much RAM though.

Hope this helps...

Answer 2

Since you will be putting a lot of pics and music on it, you should get the one with 80 gig hard drive. Also since it has Vista you will also need the 1 GB ram(1024), as vista uses more ram than XP did--512 will be too slow. Its nice to have wireless, make sure it comes with the wireless card already installed. Also you will have to buy a wireless router (Linksys is a good brand) for about $50.

Answer 3

ghz is the speed at which information is processed, faster=better

gb is storage capacity, or how much stuff you can have saved onto your computer

ram is the computer's working space. all temporary info is stored here. more = better

i suggest you get a better computer than these two. the processor is ok, not that great, but its fit for your uses. the ram you're probably gonna need more since you're probably gonna be multitasking. 1gb ram is good. 512 is probably bare minimum.

for your hard drive, i reccomend lots more space. at least 120-250 gb because you have alot of music and photos. otherwise, 80gb is fine.

Answer 4

Basic rule of buying a computer is buy as much RAM memory as fits in your budget. 512mb is not going to be enough in today's world of computing, so I would reccomend the 80gb drive w/ 1gb RAM. You will just be frustrated with the other one because it will slow way down about a month after you get it.

Answer 5

Since it is running Vista you will need the 1 gb of ram unless you want to spend minutes just opening programs and starting up. Basically you will need as much ram as plausibe.

Answer 6

Celeron M-439 is not hi grade its very low grade and will not perform very well no matter how much ram it has installed, don't waste your money

Answer 7

get the biggest harddrive that you can afford.more room for pics and movies and music.