T43 benefit from memory upgrade?

I have an old faithful t43 with 512mb memory (3 years old) (2x256mb sticks).

Would It benefit from a memory boost? I could take out the 256 stick and put in a 1gig stick pretty easily.

Sometimes, when I'm doing alot at once it will drop its bundle and lock up for 20 seconds (in task manager programs would be listed as 'non responding'). Could this be the hard disk? For example I have a folder with over 4gigs of photos in it. If I double click that folder, sometimes, it takes 20 to 30 seconds to open. Would that be more a hardware issue?

Thanks.

 

Couldn't hurt!

Anyways, 512mb is a very small amount, going up to 1gig should make some difference.

Could also check your task manager to see how much ram your system is actually using

 

Make sure you check the full Commit Charge. This will include the page file and is very important in this equation as well (it may say 100MB of RAM is free, but you have 1.2GB of paged memory).

Regardless, I would definitely upgrade it. My T40 shipped with 512MB of RAM (in 2003), and I upgraded it to 1GB in 2005, helping me to hold onto it until I got an x200 in August 2008.

 

I bought some memory today.

I hope it goes well. I had a desktop, with XP, with 512mb in it. Removed the 512 stick and ut in two 1gig sticks. Performance improvement was substantial, especialluy when browsing many images in picasa. Also found the hard disk wasn't spinning so much.

Hoping for similar results with the T43. Putting a 1gig stick in the t43.

 

Sounds like you made a good move. It will allow you to keep the T43 going for longer. I would also make sure you defrag your harddrive, which can help things as well.

 

You can get a slightly better performance by installing two similar memory sticks, which will work together in dual-channel mode. Not so much improvement that you'd notice in normal use, but I thought I'd mention it.

Doesn't the T43 take DDR2 memory? Those are pretty cheap right now so adding a second 1 gig stick won't cost much more.