That's the bad news. The good news is that if your PC shipped with a mere 16Mb of memory, or even less, and you're now finding things more than a little on the slow side, there's plenty you can do to increase the performance of your system just by increasing the memory count. In fact, it's still often overlooked that memory is more important than processor speed for the majority of common computing tasks. You may think that a 700MHz AMD Athlon-based system will be the fastest thing in the office, but if it only has 32Mb of memory, and is up against a 500MHz system with 128Mb, then it's the slower system that's likely to be the quicker. The reason for this apparent discrepancy is not that hard to explain.
Memory is quick.
This results in a phenomenon known technically as 'disk thrashing'. If your PC appears to have ground to a halt, but the hard disk activity light is still on, the chances are that this is what's happening. Not if you want to be taken seriously, anyway. Memory comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, configurations, speeds and capacities. It really is one of the most complex aspects of a system upgrade, so read on to find out how to avoid the pitfalls.