OT: How much RAM should I get in a new laptop ?

linux guy linuxguy123 at gmail.com
Fri Dec 23 10:04:59 UTC 2011


I'm specing a new laptop, probably a Dell XPS 17, with an i7
processor.  It will have an SSD and be driving 2 monitors.

The XPS 17s come in two varieties, one with 2 DIMM slots and the other
with 4 DIMM slots.

- I do a ton of browsing for research purposes and may have as many as
20 Firefox sessions open at one time.
- I use Thunderbird with mail accounts with more than 100K messages in them.
- I do some software development in Eclipse with gcc.  Compile times
can be lengthy on some projects.
- I use Digikam to manage and edit all my Nikon D7000 images, which
are shot in raw
- I want to get into editing D7000 video files
- I want to get into 3D CAD.

How much RAM do I reasonably require ?  Is it worth paying more for 4
DIMM sockets over 2 ?

Thanks !


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