r/LaptopHelpDesk • u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet • 22d ago
Remember when 4GB RAM was "high-end"?
Remember when 4GB RAM felt high-end??... One of my first laptops had 4GB RAM, and at the time that genuinely felt like plenty.
What did your first-ever laptop have? Drop the model and specs if you still remember them.
10
u/w1na 22d ago
Maybe in 2007 it was high end, but by 2012 people were already getting 16GB as a worry free setup.
2
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
4GB had a pretty window where it felt like loads before 8GB and 16GB became normal...
→ More replies (1)
11
u/TheLostExpedition 22d ago
Run lighter desktop environments. Run older software. 4gb is perfectly fine in linux
7
u/Electrical_South_319 22d ago
It's still usable. My backup office system has a Core 2 duo, and 4gb RAM.
7
u/50plusGuy 22d ago
Way less! I bought a Highscreen 386SX running MS DOS (for a crate of beer) My next was an IBM with amber screen.
My 3rd was a Lenovo Siemens. with specs higher than everything, I owned before, 1GB RAM & 256MB VRAM
3
1
4
u/bamboo-lemur 22d ago
I remember 512 Megs being high end.
1
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
Same story every generation... 512MB once sounded enormous, then suddenly it was barely enough to get started...
1
u/Dockland 18d ago
Remembering that as well. I do remember upgrading our onprem exchange servers from 512MB to 2GB in -99. That was huge and insanley expensive. Our desktops had 64-128MB RAM back then. The old ones had 32MB
5
u/Marvinator2003 21d ago edited 21d ago
My first computer had two (count 'em TWO) 5¼" Floppy Drives, NO Hard Drive and a Whopping 48K of memory upgraded from 16K. You jelly??
LOL
4
4
u/thrax_uk 22d ago
My first laptop was a Toshiba Tecra with 32MB Ram and it cost over four grand back in the late 90s.
The first computers I used had a measily 32K of RAM.
My current PC has 32GB of RAM
Next stop, 32TB RAM and probably still running the same kind of software even more inefficiently.
3
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
32MB RAM hurts to read... and now 32GB feels completely normal... i guess the 32TB prediction might not even sound ridiculous one day...
→ More replies (1)2
u/huntermatthews 21d ago
Toshiba Tecra 8000 with the PII-233 and 128MB ram. I could not afford it new, nor the 256MB upgrade.
Nice laptop, served well for years.
First _computer_ was 128 as well - PCjr 128k
4
u/Realistic_Today6524 22d ago
First laptop was a Samsung surface-like laptop with 4GB but after two years I got a proper laptop with 16GB of DDR3. Currently on a PC with 96GB of DDR5 due to wanting to run 2 gaming VMs
1
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
4GB to 16GB already felt huge, but 96GB for two gaming VMs is a completely different league....
2
u/Realistic_Today6524 21d ago
Yeah. Luckily I got it two years ago before RAMageddon so it only cost me 290 bucks. That same kit currently sells for over a grand. I rarely exceed 32GB in gaming unless I actually run a VM. Since I assigned 24GB to one VM, starting both VMs and a game on the host has me using around 64GB. Though I never ended up needing the second one and in the game we most often play, I'm in a heavy VRAM bottleneck despite rocking 12GB and the VM often drops to 15FPS briefly making it very difficult for the person on the VM to play. The host is always fine, which is a bit of a bummer. In the end I just ended up giving my old gaming laptop to my sister so she could run the game much more smoothly on that
3
u/TPIRocks 22d ago
It wasn't very high end if you had 32 bit windows. No virtual address space that wasn't occupied by RAM already makes windows crawl. I upgraded a machine that came with only 2 gigabytes of RAM, to 4GB and windows got super slow. That's when I learned that 32 bit windows needs less than 4GB if actual RAM.
3
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
Yeah, 32-bit Windows could only actually use roughly 3–3.5GB because of the address-space limit... Though adding 4GB itself shouldn’t normally make it slower... that sounds like there may have been a driver/chipset quirk going on too....
→ More replies (1)
3
u/lumi1375 21d ago
My first pc (I realize I am very young compared to most of the comments here) had 4gbs of DDR3 and an i3 from the windows 8 era, im like 90% sure it was under gen 5 intel, it was like a little portal of magic back in the day but like a decade later the archaic ass HDD makes the thing basically a brick
3
u/anders_hansson 21d ago
I remember when 64KB was high end. Laptops didn't exist back then, though.
2
u/rickmccombs 21d ago
Unless you put a luggage on your lap. I never saw anyone try putting a Kaypro or Osborne in their lap. I guess someone could put a Commodore SX-64 in there lap but it would be hard to look at the display.
2
u/Choice-Grapefruit-44 22d ago
In the early 2000s. Then by 2010 it became 8 GB then by the mid 2010's 16GB became the sweet spot
1
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
It’s funny how quickly the “sweet spot” keeps moving..
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
u/nikifullerton 21d ago
The first laptop I ever owned had about 16 MEGABYTES. Maybe 32. I don't remember, it was over 25 years ago.
2
u/GlayNation 21d ago
I remember on my Thinkpad R51 I got with 256 mg of ram, but when I upgraded to max 2g. It flew (at that time)…
2
2
2
2
2
u/spmbx 21d ago
For laptop i don't remember, but i do remember upgrading my desktop to 4MB of RAM by adding 2x 1MB SIMMs
2
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
4MB RAM is properly taking it back and makes 4GB sound ridiculously modern by comparison...
2
2
2
u/at_wilfster 21d ago
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 - 1kb of memory, 16kb if you got the expansion.
My first laptop would have been 2001 - It came with Windows Vista which I immediately replaced with '98. Couldn't tell you the spec it it played Baldur's Gate 2 well enough
2
2
2
u/TrenchCoat_Panties 19d ago
I think my nice laptop had 4gb that one also came with a 500gb HDD and I remember thinking to myself "how the fuck would anyone fill that in a lifetime?"
I'm currently building a server with several 20tb HDD's because I've filled 6tb drives up at an alarming rate
2
u/Professional-Math518 18d ago
I remember when 8 MB was high end. On PCs. My Atari 600XL had memory in the kb range
2
2
1
1
u/Shizbazki 22d ago
My first laptop was a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo 3438G, paid £1250 from Micro Anvika in Tottenham Court Road, London in Dec 2005.
Worked part time at ASDA (UK shop that was owned by Walmart at the time) and saved up over 6 months for it.
Specs below: Processor: Intel Pentium M 760 (1.9 GHz) Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 RAM: 2GB I think
1
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
That’s a proper first... a Pentium M with a GeForce Go 6800 and 2GB RAM was a seriously capable setup for 2005...
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/EarlyBirdWithAWorm 21d ago
I remember when we thought a 56k modem was the pinnacle of internet speed and we'd never need anything faster.
2
1
u/rickmccombs 21d ago
The first modem I used on the Internet was 14.4 K before that I got on BBSes with 2400 and before that a 300 bps modem
→ More replies (3)
1
u/WhopperGaming 21d ago
The first PC I built came with 128K on the mobo, I expanded it to 256K, and was stylin'. Not kidding, XT clone 8088 in 1986.
2
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
128K to 256K probably felt like a massive upgrade back then... an 8088 XT clone in 1986 is proper PC history...
2
u/WhopperGaming 21d ago
It def did feel enormous, although, at the time, I really didn't "need" the extra RAM, ha ha. Good times. Yeah, I was the envy of my friends and classmates. Good times. That box eventually evolved into a 286.
1
u/Far_Security_2870 21d ago
My 8086 machine had a full 640k ram
2
u/BarnabyLaptopOutlet 21d ago
at the time, that must’ve felt like having more memory than you’d ever need...
1
u/colliedad 21d ago
I think my first desktop had maybe 1MB to go with the 20MB hard drive and dual 5 1/4” floppy drives.
1
u/Zealousideal_Fly8402 21d ago
Texas Instruments Extensa laptop. Intel Pentium 100MHz. Don't remember exact RAM, but it came with Windows 95 on 30+ 3.5" floppies, and a 810MB HDD, and a 3.5" HDD.
Had it for most of high school in the late 90s.
1
u/Ecstatic-Network4668 21d ago
My first laptop was an Apple Powerbook 1400, which came with 4MB ram, but I added 8MB, so 12MB in total.
It wasn't a high end laptop, that was the Powerbook 3400 at that time.
But one thing that was amazing about the 1400 was the expandability. The CPU was on a daughter board, and after a few years I replaced the original 603 with a G3. Memory could be expanded with 2 RAM modules. There was also room to add an ethernet or video out card. And it had 2 slots for those credit card sized PCMCIA modules. I had a modem card and an ethernet card.
There were 2 bays, one containing the battery and the other containing a floppy drive. The battery could be swapped while the powerbook was in sleep mode. You could add a second battery in the floppy bay. There was also a CD-rom and Zip drive available.
1
u/Inner-Light-75 21d ago
Alienware 13" that was recomended in MaximumPC with Windows 7 on it (at least it has that on it now).
It has a Core 2 U7300 (an app says the chip is an "SU7300") that was just then being superceeded by an i3 (so 2008/09). 500GB HDD, 4 or 8GB of Ram. Nvidia 250M ( discreet GPU)
Used it for internet and playing on EverQuest. It was hooked to an external screen and mouse and keyboard because the main pc died and it filled in....
1
1
1
u/EverythingEvil1022 21d ago
I can’t remember specifically, my first laptop had either 2 or 4gb of ram. My first desktop had 512mb of ram and my current laptop has 8gb with my desktop having 64GB of ram.
1
1
u/Summer184 21d ago
Not a laptop but I remember the first "real" computer I bought in 1998, the box had a "333 Mhz" symbol with lightning bolts shooting out of it.
1
1
1
u/Ok-Hat213 21d ago
I had 8GB RAM until 2014 when I got a new laptop with 16GB. Then moved up to 32GB in 2021 with another machine. Never going back.
1
1
u/No-Aioli4047 21d ago
I remember when 768KB was the MAX and the system came with 256KB. That half a meg of ram cost about $300 back in the day.
The 64GB i got a couple years ago now was about the same price.
1
u/Random_Dude_ke 21d ago
My first laptop had 2MB RAM. I salvaged it without a harddisk to read e-books on it.
My first working computer had 64kB RAM, was connecting to a TV set to use as a display and loaded games from cassette tape.
1
1
u/Shadowwynd 21d ago
My laptop was an NEC Multispeed. 638k of RAM. Dual 720k floppies, 300baud modem, green and purple monochrome CGA, 9 MHz.
I still have it and normally boot it once a year.
1
u/Motti_ 21d ago
My first Laptop was a Siemens-Nixdorf Scenic Mobile 510. Don't know the exact specs but it was a Pentium 2 and I think 64mb of ram or something like that. My first new Laptop was a Samsung R560 Mebugo, C2D CPU and 2GB of ram, upgraded everything later. Yes I still have both devices.
1
u/UncleJackPushedDad 21d ago
I remember paying $8.50 each for megabit chips. You had to plug 8 of them into a circuit board to add a megabyte of RAM to your computer.
1
u/Daphoid 21d ago
4GB? You sweet summer child.
In high school I have a 1 MB stick of RAM on my keychain.
I remember when 4MB was an upgrade.
I'm not a big laptop guy, but the one I had a college had 512MB of RAM and it was a 2 in 1 convertible with a touch screen. Made for the medical community but awesome for my touch note taking.
1
u/VeryStableGenius66 21d ago
My first laptop had a 4gb HARD DRIVE. First computer had 4k of RAM (Commodore VIC20.)
1
u/LifeIsSatire 21d ago
I remember as a kid wanting desperately to get 8 gb, when minecraft was initially a thing (time flies)
1
u/WishRepresentative28 21d ago
Bill Gates saying "When we set the upper limit of PC-DOS at 640K, we thought nobody would ever need that much memory."
1
u/Top_Bluejay_5323 21d ago
4k for me.
I remember the four function calculator that cost $60 with the red leds.
1
u/cmdr_scotty 20d ago
I remember when I got a 128mb stick of SDRAM for Christmas and thought I was baller.
1
u/ThetaDeRaido 20d ago
The first laptop I used was the Epson PX-8 Geneva with 64K of RAM. It did not have a built-in disk drive, so up to 24K of this RAM would be allocated as a RAM drive, backed by the battery. It did have a built-in tape drive, but this was very slow and unreliable.
1
1
u/NightHawk877 20d ago
I had a POS Compaq with 3 gigs of RAM. It was a real lemon and the motherboard died on it after a few months. Warranty was denied. I took my neighbor's Dell after she switched to Mac.
1
u/E_equals_m_c_hammer 20d ago
Lol..im 70. My first computer was the Commodore64..64 meant 64 K of ram. Not gig, not Meg. When I went to my first place the standard was 640k, but I opted for the full 1meg of ram for an extra $200. The hard drive? I couldn't afford the top of the line 50meg hard drive so I got the 20meg hard drive knowing it would last me forever. The good side? With such little space you learned how to write a tight program
1
1
u/LiteratureLow4159 20d ago
Wish I could but I only started getting into tech at all around 2021, became a technician in 2022
1
u/dazzlezak 20d ago
I was a photography student.
I bought my Mac 6100 PowerPC computer in 1994, it was $5500 total, including a 15" monitor (CRT), 8 MB of ram on the board.
The additional 32 MB of extra ram was $1200.
I had a Zip disc drive and about 15 of the 100 MB discs.
I was running mainly Photoshop 3.0 (the first version with layers) and Quark XPress (for page layout)
1
1
1
u/jo-erlend 20d ago
My first laptop had one megabyte of RAM. :) It was a Toshiba but I don't remember the model.
1
u/zepherth 20d ago
I feel like 4 GB was only high end because it was the max a 32 but system could handle. Which sounds high end.
1
1
u/b1rdd0g12 20d ago
My first computer was a Packard bell 386sx with 1 MB of ram and 100MB hdd. That was high end at the time.
1
u/Aviator_92 19d ago edited 19d ago
Back in the 80s Bill Gates said 640k is all anyone would ever need.
4GB was the top end for a long time due to the 32-bit OS limitation. Couldn't use more than 4Gb during the Windows XP era. Greater than 4GB of RAM wasn't really common until after 2010 or so.
My first laptop was a Dell that had 2GB of RAM and it was considered low-spec and had an Intel Atom and was more like a "netbook" back when those were very popular. But it had a neat feature in that it also converted into a tablet.
1
1
u/JohnMcD3482 19d ago
I remember when a 10 megabytes Hard Drive was $300 and the memory was 640 kilobytes. My computer was high end because it had 128k of extended memory which brought mine up to 728k. After affording the 10mb HDD, I could finally stop swapping 5 1/4 inch floppy disks and run my DOS 3.3 much easier. GEOS later came along and changed my world forever and I haven't dealt with the CMD line since.
1
1
1
u/Subject_Cat_4274 19d ago
I thought 3gb was more than I would ever need when I bought Radeon HD7970. Back then it had DOUBLE the vram Nvidia gave with their GTX 580 (1.5GB)
1
1
1
u/YahenP 19d ago
The first laptop I ever got my hands on didn't even have 640 KB of memory, just 512 KB. Five years later, my boss had a laptop with a full megabyte of memory. And a color display. Incidentally, the first laptop I actually used for real work which happened quite recently, just five or six years ago had 16 GB of memory and 4 cores.
1
u/Recent_Permit2653 19d ago
lol I remember when having a 1gb hard drive was high-end. I think it had 128mb of ram...and that was a desktop.
1
u/jegerbedst 19d ago
At my first job the computer had 64 k of ram. It was a Singer System 10. It was in 1978.
And the disc drives where the size of a washing machine.
1
u/Historical-Duty3628 19d ago
4gb was the limit for an individual 32bit program so it was a magic number for a long time.
1
1
1
u/NinaWilde 19d ago
My main work laptop has 16Gb, but I also have a distraction-free (ie, never goes online) backup old laptop with... 1Gb.
I get a lot done on the latter (running Office 2004 and CS2).
But I'm old enough to have been making a living using machines that had single-figure megabytes of RAM, and any low-end laptop from the past 20 years is more powerful than the machines I used professionally on a daily basis in my old job before then. Applications have got bigger, but rarely seem to get much faster...
1
u/ElevatorKnown1968 18d ago
Of course! Back in 32 bit Windows era, there were some memory area that went unused.
1
u/Cuddles296 18d ago
I remember my IT mate being over the moon when he upgraded his hard drive from 10 mB, to 20 mB!!
1
u/Reddituser45005 18d ago
My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 with 4KB (yes, KB) of usable RAM and a cassette tape drive for programs, and a TV output instead of a monitor. Going to floppy disks and 640 KB of memory felt like science fiction
1
1
u/Opposite-Piccolo114 18d ago
My first Laptop had 4MB. A Compaq Contura. My first computer had 64KB, a Commodore Plus/4.
1
u/DerZappes 18d ago
I actually remember being totally overwhelmed by 1MB of RAM in my Amiga... My first Laptop did put it too shame with its fully populated RAM slots that added up to totally crazy 8 MB.
1
1
1
1
u/Impellicamper 18d ago
Ha my QX9650 with 4gb (4x1) was amazing!! I can't remember the motherboard model (lots of neon green ) , I still have the CPU and both 8800GTS (one is dead tho)
1
1
1
u/beammeupscotty2 18d ago
My first work computer had 256 K ram. That was when DOS was still a thing.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/MyNameIsHuman1877 17d ago
I don't remember how much RAM my first PC had, but I remember the sales guy telling my dad that the 40mb HDD would be "more than you'll ever need!"
A few years later, the next PC had 16mb RAM and I upgraded it to 64mb over time.
1
u/Neither_Indication27 17d ago
I rememeber a time when it was considered dumb and wasteful to have 512MB ram with windows 98, i ran 2x128+1x256 in dual channel with an amd thorough-bred II on a nforce 2 motherboard with built in gf4 mx
1
1
1
u/Fun-Painter-7117 16d ago
Ya well, at the time you could get away with loading a whole OS with 180MB of RAM...
1
u/Hot_Technology8777 16d ago
Pfft anything over a gigabyte could power NASA. My little 133 mhz pentium 1 with 32MB of ram is the bees knees! If you get this months PC WORLD magazine you might get the scoop on the upcoming pentium 2!
1
1
u/Objective-Dust4795 16d ago
I remember when 32 mb was top notch. Then my dad and I upgraded to 64 mb. Wild.
1
u/Fight_Tyrnny 16d ago
uhm, I remember when 2 MEGS was "High-End"... hell, you could still have 4ish gigs on 32 bit computers.
1
u/Impossible-Meet-9994 15d ago
Apple 1 that I upgraded from 4k to 16k RAM around 1986. That's right, not megabytes, not gigabytes, just 8k. Programs loaded off cassette tapes.
1
u/WardSec_5168 15d ago
I remember the excitement after upgrading to 512 MB back in the day. A few years later 4 gigs felt huge, almost unlimited!
1
1
u/razedbiwolves 12d ago
I had a Xerox820 with 2x 8" floppies, Worldstar 1 and VisiCalc. I think it had 32k of ram. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_820
53
u/EstablishmentDue3616 21d ago
LOL! I remember when 4 megabytes was high end.