1.42 GHz iBook G4

My iBook has 512MB of RAM. I have purchased an additional 1GB of RAM and wanted to ask if the additional RAM will have any noticeable difference on the computer? What effects will an additional 1GB of RAM have?
Thanks!

When a Mac running Mac OS X needs more RAM memory, not having it available causes some least-recently-used and not-modified RAM pages to be marked "unloaded", and that RAM is re-used for something else. If memory get still tighter, it may cause some parts of RAM to be written to Disk instead of staying in RAM.
The more you are short of RAM and use all the RAM you have allocated, the more stuff goes to Disk. Since Disk Accesses take much longer than real RAM, everything slows down. If you open one big Application, then another, and stay in the second Application exclusively, only your Application-switching time will be impacted.
Activity Monitor has a nice display that can show you how much free RAM (green) is available. It also has a display mode (when you close its main window) where it can show only the pie chart of how RAM is being used in the Activity Monitor Icon in the Dock. You can tell at a glance that your Mac is being slowed down (due to lack of RAM) when only a small area of Green memory is available.
Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

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