What does RAM do?

What does RAM do? And for example I have 4GB's of RAM in my computer but I believe its upgradable to 8GB, if I upgraded it to 6GB or 8GB what would I notice changed about it from the current 4GB RAM?
Thank you

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the equivalant of human 'short term' memory - it stores information that's currently being used. The hard drive of the computer is the equivalent of human 'long term' memory - it holds all the information you're not currently using, such as files you've saved.
When your computer runs out of RAM it starts to use the hard drive instead. The problem here is that the speed information can be stored onto the hard drive is far slower than the speed RAM operates at, so it slows your computer down fairly dramatically.
Having more RAM lets you do more things at once, for example having many applications open at the same time. Whether you would benefit from more RAM or not depends on how you use your computer, if you multitask a lot you'd probably notice a difference. The following article shows how to see your RAM use:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1342
If you've not got much green 'free' memory left and/or a large number of page outs you could probably do with adding more

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