RAM vs SSD

[GTP]

4 gigs will "get them by" as long as they do not do all of the above all at once.

Let's face most end users struggle to use one browser window - let alone 2 at a time!

 

[brandonkick]

Those days are coming to an end very quickly.

I normally find a machine just runs like garbage on 4GB. Maybe the exception is Win 10 with an SSD and i5 processor or better. Back in the middle of Win 7's life and onward... I felt like anything less than 8GB was just asking for it. Unless you had a way to install a system with all the updates out of the gate, forget about it. I think 4 GB is a little lean. I know 6 GB just wasn't usable for me any more and I'm not an extreme multi tasker by any means.

But if you worked efficiently, didn't have many tabs open, didn't leave random programs just open... I suppose you could make due with it. I just wouldn't want to.

 

[Porthos]

Maybe the exception is Win 10 with an SSD and i5 processor or better.

Agreed

 

[seedubya]

RAM all the way man ....

J/k - get the SSD.

 

[Sky-Knight]

4gb runs short as soon as Outlook is open, so 8gb is my minimum. I'll usually skip 16 and go straight to 32gb for power users these days because my power users are usually CAD or SQL heavy work loads, the RAM is critical to these work flows.

All systems have SSDs now, only backup servers and surveillance storage systems have platter drives. I will not deploy or sell a machine that isn't SSD equipped anymore. Power users are starting to get off SATA SSD and move to NVME SSD as well.

Finally, no one needs an i7... and I mean that NO ONE NEEDS an i7. You're always better off getting an i5 with a faster clock for the money. The only time i7 makes sense is if you're using the workstation as a hypervisor. Intel's i7 platform is 100% more money than sense, all the performance of tomorrow at absurd cost today insanity. There is call for it, but it's relatively rare. Unless you've got a hypervisor or SQL work load, buy a faster i5... too bad Dell won't cooperate here and you end up with i7s everywhere...

 

[Kitten Kong]

Let's face most end users struggle to use one browser window - let alone 2 at a time!

browser window?

what is this you dare speak of.

i mean they can easily let a scammer access to their machine, but getting clients to go to our website and download then install x is asking fsr to much of them lol

 

[AlexCa]

Sure it depends on the use, but for a "regular" business setup I think that 4GB is low nowadays... In my experience, Windows 10 + Office 2016 (Outlook, some Excel files opened), Spotify, Chrome with some tabs open, one or another LOB program opened, and other stuff running in the background is enough to use most of it. I think that 8GB + SSD is a good starting point.

 

[GTP]

browser window?

what is this you dare speak of.

i mean they can easily let a scammer access to their machine, but getting clients to go to our website and download then install x is asking fsr to much of them lol

Off topic, but I had a woman yesterday that left her laptop on 24/7 because she didn't know how to turn it off!
Her husband just told her to leave it on 'cause he didn't know either.
She thought that by unplugging it and waiting for the screen to go black was how you shut it down! FFS!

 

[timeshifter]

Let's face most end users struggle to use one browser window - let alone 2 at a time!

Except that one browser window will have 83 tabs open.

 

[GTP]

Except that one browser window will have 83 tabs open.

That's usually Thunderbird lol!
They complain about Thunderbird taking ages to open and you discover they have 250 Tabs open.

 

[Diggs]

That's usually Thunderbird lol!
They complain about Thunderbird taking ages to open and you discover they have 250 Tabs open.

Are we talking email or web browsing (Firefox)? I don't see many that leave tabs open in Thunderbird but plenty in Firefox.

 

[HFultzjr]

A few of my customers, don't know about opening multiple tabs.
1 even closes his browser to open a new tab.....................LOL.
Yes, I've showed them how to use tabs, but they always goes back to "what they remember".

 

[NJW]

I don't see many that leave tabs open in Thunderbird ...

Yeah, the default is to open messages in new windows/tabs. I always change it to reuse an existing window.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Exactly. You can even have up to 20 tabs open in Chrome with only 4GB of RAM so long as you don't have a video open in each tab. 4GB will even do gaming decently. More RAM does nothing but allow you to have more things open at the same time. If they're sticking to one heavier application (like a game or Photoshop) or multiple small applications (like Word and Chrome) open at a time then they'll be fine with 4GB of memory.

Can you have them really open though? 20 tabs on 64bit os with 4GB of ram I would imagine thats going to trigger the auto tab discarding, it still looks like you have the tabs open but it reloads the page when you switch to it because it discards them from memory once you get low enough.