Why you Need to Upgrade to 8 gigs of Ram on your Mac

A 2011 Macbook Pro running 8 gigs of Ram.

My Macbook Pro, early 2011 model with an i5 processor seemed to be running slower and slower the past few months. I had blown off the idea my Macbook needed any upgrading and figured running Google Chrome, iTunes, Twitter and CoBook had contributed to a slow down, and really those programs were slowing me down. When I finally got around to checking out my CPU and GPU usage in the Activity Monitor, I had about 30 mb free, ONLY 30 mb, ridiculous for a Macbook a little over a year old.

Now I know Apple Says 4 gbs of ram is enough to run OS X Lion, but what a joke. Even with everything closed and nothing running other than the OS itself, I was still using almost 3 gigs of ram. No wonder my Macbook felt slow. So I set out to address the issue and wanted to add more ram. Since I lack some patience and I am not really a DIY guy, I wanted someone to install more ram. So I called Apple first, I asked them how much it would cost to go from 4 gigs of ram to 8 with instillation. Sadly, I cut him off when he said 99 bucks per stick of ram. So I then called Best Buy, they said you could pick up ram in the store, about 8 gigs or a 2X 4gigs for about 40 bucks and instillation is 50 bucks. So I said i'd pass on that offer.

I ended up checking out ifixit.com and installed 8 gigs of ram to make my Macbook Pro for less than 45 bucks, about 250-350 dollars cheaper than what Apple wanted to charge and it took me 10 minutes. Since I added the ram, there is no slow down when running multiple applications and multitouch gestures move with much more fluidity. I highly recommend anyone that can upgrade to 8 gigs or more of ram, to do so.

So what do you think, do you think you need more ram? Do you feel like your Macbook Pro feels a little sluggish with multiple applications open? Or are you just fine with what you've got? Thats all we've got so far. Peace Apple Nation and Happy Friday!