A writer at CNet’s News.com web site tried out the “Upgrade Advisor” software provided by Microsoft to test the readiness of various computers to accept and run, without trouble, the next version of Microsoft’s OS. Which computer was most compatible, according to the tester?

An Apple Intel Mac Mini with 1GB of RAM running Boot Camp.

Go figure.

There is a point I wanted to make in addition: always upgrade your RAM. When you buy a computer, you’re buying from a store that wants to price things as low as they can go while still maintaining as high a profit margin as they can manage. So add-ons are one way they go: if they can sell you on a low base price, they can still claim they’re selling cheaply even after you bought a whole bunch of other stuff that they stripped from the machine to make it look cheap.

RAM is one of the first things they pare down, like an airline getting rid of yet another “perk” like, say, food. Most people know little or nothing about RAM. If you know, for example, that with a sufficiently powerful CPU, 256MB of RAM is more than enough to run Windows Vista while having three or more standard applications running, then you are one of the 9 of 10 people who know very little about RAM, because that statement is totally false. If you caught on to the falsehood before you got to the part of the sentence where I let on to the truth, then you’re the other one in ten who knows a little something about it. But since 9 in 10 don’t, stores can sell you a computer with too little RAM and you won’t notice.

In fact, having enough RAM is very important–but that won’t be apparent at the store. First, the store model (presuming that they don’t cheat and put extra RAM in) is probably just running one app. RAM is a finite resource which your OS takes a big chunk of, and then each new app you open takes another chunk, and so on, until you run out of RAM. I had a friend who could open Windows ‘Me’ really well, and could even work MS Word snappily–but if she opened a second app, her computer would reeeally slow down. Reason: she had only 128MB of RAM, and Windows + Word used it all up.

Why does a computer slow down when it runs out of RAM? Because programs need a certain amount of memory to temporarily store data while the CPU is busy with something else. RAM is that storage space, and it’s very fast. When RAM fills up, the computer may have to resort to using the hard drive–which is way slower. So when RAM runs out and your computer starts using the hard drive for everything, your computer slows way down.

Here’s another reason why the need to upgrade RAM doesn’t show up at the computer store: because the need is off in the future. In the story I started this entry with, I noted that Microsoft’s “Upgrade Advisor” checks your computer for Vista compatibility. One point of compatibility is the amount of RAM. That’s because Vista needs a lot more RAM than XP. XP needed more RAM than Windows 2000. 2000 needed more RAM than ’95. Et cetera. Just about every new version of any kind of software requires more RAM than the last version, sometimes significantly more. This is true with operating systems or application software. So, while that present-day showroom computer can run XP and Word 2003 just fine with 512MB of RAM, if will fail dismally at running Vista and Word 2007. They can ignore that at the showroom.

A lot of people actually end up throwing away their computers when they become too slow, without realizing that all they need is more RAM, and it’ll become zippier.

That’s why it’s a good idea to upgrade your RAM right away, when you buy your computer: it allows you to open up as many apps as you like without worrying, and it inoculates you from slowdowns when you upgrade your software later on.

That’s not to say that RAM is the only thing you need to worry about. The CPU is important, as is the graphics card, and some other technical geek stuff. I’ve heard Windows users sneer at Macs because of the prices, talking about $500 PCs. When you point out that the Mac Mini starts at about that price, they’ll laugh, and point out that it doesn’t come with an LCD monitor! No problem. Just buy your Mac Mini and use your old monitor, then you can laugh at them next year, when your Core Duo Mac Mini is running Windows Vista and Office 2007 in Boot Camp (or whatever new version Apple has by then) while they’re just figuring out that the weak-ass Celeron they bought can’t make the same upgrade.