A small lesson in RAM, its importance and how much should you have for voice recognition.

RAM (Random Access Memory) is one of the most important components in making your speech recognition system work well.

RAM is where your software actually resides while you are using it. Your hard drive stores all of your software and operating system information, and when you need to use components or applications, it is then loaded into RAM. This is needed because RAM is thousands of times faster than your hard drive and you need this quick access in order to have your programs run smoothly.

Voice Recognition is very memory dependant. Most voice recognition systems need at least 16 MB to operate itself. This does not include what it takes to run your operating system and/or other programs that may be operating.

Some of your memory is used to manage "Soft Memory". This is the memory your computer generates on its hard drive to swap programs in out of your fast RAM when you run out of fast RAM. This is why you hear so much hard drive activity when you start or switch between programs. The computer is swapping memory from hard drive to RAM.

When you start your operating system, let's say Windows 95, there are several programs that are loaded for the operating system and several other programs you may or may not know about are loaded.

Minimum requirements for Windows 95 8 MB of RAM. Add this along with 16 MB of RAM and you've got 24 MB. Add about another 2 MB for cache and another 2 for other miscellaneous programs and you are up to 32 MB of RAM before you start using any other program.

Now, you can run other programs, but the computer will begin to swap memory with your hard drive. Get one or two memory intensive programs like MS Word 97 and MS Internet Explorer and your computer has slowed to a crawl. Depending on your processor speed, you may crawl quickly or slowly.

So, a comfortable system is 64 MB of RAM. Is this enough? It depends on how many programs you run at once. If you have 5 or 6 programs running at a time, you may experience some sluggishness throughout your system.

How much is enough?

Well, this depends on how long and how much you want to use your system.

128 MB is the ideal memory for most of today’s computers. If you need more than that, chances are you'll need to upgrade your processor too.

However, is 128-MB overkill? Absolutely not.

Not if;

You plan on running up to date programs

You plan on running multiple programs at a time

You plan on upgrading to Windows 98 or NT

128 MB of RAM is the magic number, not because we sell it, but if you want to plan ahead, you want to do this.

Software applications are becoming more demanding on memory. Don't believe me? Look at the latest versions of your programs and see how memory has been jumping.

Windows NT will replace Windows 95/98. There aren't that many improvements to Win 95 - Win 98 upgrade. This is really a big maintenance release.

(See http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/JustIn/Items/0,118,370,00.html)

Windows NT will be the "New Operating" system we will all eventually upgrade to. Windows NT Personal Edition (or some other name like this) will replace the Win 95/98 era.

This system which will be out within a year will most likely require 64MB of RAM. (Current systems require 32 MB of RAM).

How about the new version of MS Word? Do you think it's going to require less memory? No way.

So, depending on what you want to do with your computer and how long you want it to last, you must choose your investment wisely.

Lastly, one more thing about memory. You have a limited amount of slots available for memory on your motherboard (main cpu).

Some have 2 and some have 4 slots. If you have 2 slots and you have 32 MB of RAM, depending on your computer architecture, you may have to buy 64 MB of RAM from scratch instead of upgrading because you do not have any more slots. Most Pentium boards require you to insert memory in pairs.

Well, enough about all of this memory. For more information on memory, upgrading, etc., please look at our links to the left of this article.