Notebook Makers Moving to 4 GB Memory As Standard

akintayo writes "Digitimes reports that first-tier notebook manufacturers are increasing the standard installed memory from the current 1 GB to 4GB. They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market. The glut is supposedly due to increased manufacturing capacity and the slow adoption of Microsoft's Vista operating system. The proposed move is especially interesting, given that 32-bit Vista and XP cannot access 4 GB of memory. They have a practical 3.1 — 3.3 GB limit. With Vista SP1 it seems that Microsoft has decided to fix the problem by reporting the installed memory rather than the available memory."

Comments

Article doesn't say what summary says

[INowRegretThesePosts]

From the summary: "They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market."

The article says: "While first-tier notebook vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba are planning to roll out 4GB notebooks starting from the first quarter of 2008, the move is expected to give a boost to the DRAM market, according to memory module makers."

The article does not say that this is a deliberate attempt to increase DRAM price. And if it was, wouldn't it be illegal?

Re:Fix the problem by misleading the customer?

[IhuntCIA]

In boot.ini file add switch /PAE at the end of multi(0)disk.. line

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer /PAE

It will not solve Your PR problem nor will solve the problem with incorrect reporting of available RAM, but will allow 32-bit Windows XP Professional to use all of it. In my experience, most programs / games can't use all 4GB of RAM, but if user is running more than one RAM hungry application (multitasks), 4GBs becomes useful.
Also we have to think about future Vista service packs so, 4GB is must have :)

Re:That's great

[ozmanjusri]

He never said it.

He may not have said it, but he believed it;

Bill Gates Challenges and Strategy Memo (16 May 1991)

I laid out memory so the bottom 640K was general purpose RAM and the upper 384 I reserved for video and ROM, and things like that. That is why they talk about the 640K limit. It is actually a limit, not of the software, in any way, shape, or form, it is the limit of the microprocessor. That thing generates addresses, 20-bits addresses, that only can address a megabyte of memory. And, therefore, all the applications are tied to that limit. It was ten times what we had before. But to my surprise, we ran out of that address base for applications within--oh five or six years people were complaining.

Re:Fix the problem by misleading the customer?

[ozmanjusri]

In boot.ini file add switch /PAE at the end of multi(0)disk.. line

That's not such a good idea.

The reason PAE mode isn't enabled by default is because it conflicts with DMA. Enabling it may make your Windows system even more unstable.