The base of the home studio operation is the computer. My Toshiba laptop that’s nearly two years old  that came with 1 gig SDRAM is now operating much more efficiently now that I’ve recently upgraded to 4 gigs.

Audio processing chews up a lot of processing power and now me and my computer are working better than ever, and it cost a fraction of the scary prospect up purchasing a new machine.

Here’s a helpful article found at Tigerdirect, where they have a cool tool called Memory Configurator

Upgrading Your Memory to Improve Performance

As programs get more complex, you’ll discover that your trusty PC may not be working as quickly or efficiently as it used to. While your impulse might be to purchase a new, more powerful computer, you can dramatically improve performance simply by upgrading your memory. For far less than what you’d pay for a new computer, a memory upgrade will often have your PC working faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Beefing up your PC’s memory is an inexpensive and surprisingly simple way to give yourself a huge boost in performance. Besides, today’s complex software and graphics-intensive games chew up your memory almost as fast as you can add it on. Therefore, it’s best to prepare for the immediate future by loading on as much memory as you can. To give you an example how things are changing in the memory game, Microsoft advises that you need at least 128MB of memory to run Windows XP, but the more the merrier, with 512MB ideal and 1GB even better. Many industry experts today recommend that you upgrade to at least 1 gigabyte (1G so you can be ready for the challenges ahead of you. With a gigabyte of memory your PC will be able to run multiple programs simultaneously and give you excellent speed.

Upgrading your computer memory is simple

Two of the great things about upgrading your PC memory are the fact that it’s cheap (especially when you consider dramatically a significant memory upgrade will improve your performance), and it only takes about five minutes to drop in another memory card. And when you’re done you will be able to keep more programs running, ramp up your speed on memory-eating graphics programs and play games like never before. Plus, your PC will handle like a precision machine.

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I wanted to upgrade fast and I called my local FRY’S Electronics store. The sales person was very helpful. He suggested I go to http://www.crucial.com and download and run the tool there, which is SAFE. Just be sure to delete the program when you’re fnished. It told me what type of specific RAM i had, and what I could do for the upgrade. Yes, they had the type my machine needed.

Next question, as I don’t feel geekie enough to replace my own, “Can you perform the upgrade for me, today?”

“Yes” he said, while I wait, about 15 minutes.

“SOLD” I said.