How much memory should you have in your personal computer? How much is enough? How much is too much? How much is too little?

These are not easy questions to answer. The truth is, memory requirements to run basic programs over the last 20 years have gone up exponentially.

Back in the early stone ages of PCs your basic computer came with 64K of RAM. This was just about enough to run a simple basic program. To run any kind of a program that did anything useful, and there were very few of those, you had to upgrade to at least 128K and if possible 256K. Back then, circa 1984, this was a lot of memory and came with a hefty price tag of about $1 for each K of memory. So a 256K upgrade cost you about $256. Some places would give you a discount and you could walk away with your beefed up computer for about $250 in upgrade costs. And still, there was very little you could do with the darn thing.

The years went by and programs started getting developed that actually did something. Simple spreadsheet programs like Lotus for example. To run these you needed a minimum of 256K of RAM. Eventually with upgrades to the programs themselves the bottom figure for RAM rose to about 512K. This would run you a top of the line program for that time. This was roughly around 1988.

Then the 1990's hit and things started to take off. Video games for PC's started becoming very popular. Business software was actually becoming useful. Programs were getting bigger and so were memory requirements. Programs now required memory in the megabytes instead of kilobytes. The early Dungeons and Dragons video games, which were some of the most popular of the time, required between 4 and 16 meg of RAM to run depending on the game itself. The biggest programs of the day, which really started to become extremely useful would require 16 to 32 meg to run. Now we were seeing some big numbers.

But memory was still not cheap, though it was a lot less expensive than in the 80's. Instead of paying $1 per kilobyte of memory you were paying about $5 for a megabyte of memory. So 32 meg would only cost you about $160 which wasn't too bad.

But computer enhancements started taking off like wildfire. Every year memory requirements would skyrocket. By the late 1990's it would take about 256 meg of RAM to run high end networking operations. Many computers would need 64 meg just to load the operating system itself. Memory requirements were out of control. The good news is that prices of memory dropped like lead weights. Today you can get 512 meg of DRAM for about $30. No, that's not a misprint. Memory costs have come down so much that they are almost inconsequential. However, memory requirements are still going through the roof. A typical home PC better have at least 256 meg of RAM if it wants to just be able to crawl through start up, running your Internet connection and a few applications at the same time. Having more than 8 windows open on an XP system with less than 256 meg is suicide.

So to answer the question, how much is enough. It's never enough and it won't ever be enough. Software enhancements will continue to send PC memory requirements into orbit. So the best advice anyone can give you is to get as much memory as the PC will physically hold when you get it.

If you're lucky, it will be good enough for a year.

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Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Computer Memory
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