How much RAM does your Mac need?

If you are thinking of buying a new Mac, how much RAM should you get? A 20in iMac comes with 1Gb of memory, but when you select it in the store you can choose to upgrade it to 2Gb or 4Gb. Is the 1Gb in a basic iMac adequate or do you need more, and if so, how much?

The amount of memory you need depends on the applicatations you want to run. OS X runs OK in 1Gb and about half that will be free after booting up. However, when you start running applications they can use up quite a lot of memory. Among the most memory hungry applications you can run are the virtual machines that let you run Windows on your Mac, such as VirtualBox, Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. They run very poorly on a 1Gb Mac and you need at least 2Gb, with 4Gb being the best.

These aren't the only applications that need a lot of memory and there are others. To prevent OS X from slowing to a crawl due to insufficient memory you should have at least 2Gb. If you can afford it you will find that a 4Gb Mac runs the fastest.

Going back to the question of how much RAM should you buy in your new Mac, I recommend the absolute minimum. Get the basic 1Gb in an iMac. Why? Well the problem is that Apple charges four times the price of other companies for memory modules. Apple charges £50 per gigabyte of memory. Go to the store and click the button to buy an iMac - increasing the RAM from 1Gb to 2Gb costs £50 and upping it from 1 to 4Gb is £150.

If you go to a memory supplier like Crucial you'll be charged just £12 per gigabyte. So 4Gb of memory for your iMac will cost just £47, which is less than just 1Gb extra from Apple (and you'll have a spare 1Gb when you replace it with the 2x2Gb modules). Did someone mention 'Apple Tax' recently?

I like Macs, but I dislike the prices that Apple charges, particularly over here in the UK.