HP Brio 81XX hp brio 81xx, upgrade guide - Page 12

1 Why Upgrade? Upgrading the Main Memory Upgrading the Main Memory How Much Main Memory Does My Computer Have? The amount of main memory that your computer has depends on the particular model that you have. To see how much main memory is installed, restart your computer and press the key when F2=Setup is displayed. This displays a summary screen showing the computer's configuration. The amount of main memory installed is shown on this screen (in the System RAM field). Alternatively, you can run PC Doctor for Windows (from within Windows 95) and check the System Info. Why Add More Main Memory? Adding more memory can improve the performance of your computer. The reason for this is that if your computer does not have enough memory, it will need to use hard disk space as virtual memory. Using this technique, the operating system makes the memory seem larger than it physically is, allowing large applications to execute even though the physical memory is not sufficient. Virtual memory is approximately 200 times slower than main memory. In this case, adding memory will significantly improve the computer's performance. The amount of main memory your computer requires depends on the operating system and the applications you use. You will need more memory if you use memory-hungry applications (for example, image processing and desktop publishing applications) or if you run several applications at the same time. How Much Main Your computer is capable of supporting up to 192 MB of main memory, using six memory module sockets on the system Memory Can I Add? board. Will Adding Memory Adding memory will not always improve performance. If your computer has sufficient memory, installing extra memory Always Improve will not improve performance. Performance For instructions on how to add main memory modules, refer to "Installing Main Memory" on page 25. 12