|
Computer Terms Explained in Easy Analogies
This week we clear up some confusion over storage (your hard drive) and memory (RAM). Both are measured in gigabytes, so you might have a 250GB hard drive (storage) and 2GB memory (RAM). So whats the difference? Think of your computer like your office, with a desk and a filing cabinet. The filing cabinet is your hard drive space - it stores all of your files. Think of the size of your desk as the memory or RAM. So the more RAM you have, the bigger your desk, so the more files you can have on your desk working on them at once. With a smaller desk, you have to continually put files back into your filing cabinet and take out new ones so you can work on them, slowing you down. the computer is the same - the less RAM, the more the computer has to put things back onto the hard drive to make room for new things in memory.
We can take this analogy even further. On your desk you might have a lot of accessories - pictures of the family, stationery holders, post-it notes, a lamp etc. Each takes up some space and leaves less room for you to work on lots of files as once. This is just like startup items on your PC - printer update checkers, registry cleaners, Adobe fast launch, Skype etc. The more streamlined you keep your startup items, the less run in RAM, so the more desk space you have for productivity.
|
