Is a 4GB laptop good enough?

Chikane_GTR

Chikane_GTR

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United States
Heaven
That's my question? I just can bring myself to buying a laptop with less then 6gb of memory :indiff:

Things i need a laptop for

Music
Anime's
Pictures
Net Surfing
Cool editing programs like PS and SVs ...Which i love.

Things i don't need a laptop for
Gaming :rolleyes:
 
FrzGT
Seems way too small considering the software size.
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OP means 4GB's of RAM, not storage space ;). I'm not sure about the editing programs but for everything else you mentioned, 4GB's of RAM is fine.
 
TwinTurbo LM
OP means 4GB's of RAM, not storage space ;). I'm not sure about the editing programs but for everything else you mentioned, 4GB's of RAM is fine.
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Hes nor very clear. He said 4 GB of memory but thats it. Worth noting that Chromebooks has phone style memory. But mostly 16 GB.
 
FrzGT
Hes nor very clear. He said 4 GB of memory but thats it. Worth noting that Chromebooks has phone style memory. But mostly 16 GB.
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If he means 4GB's of storage space... well, that'll fill up in seconds. Those should be avoided.
 
What's SVs? PS is Photoshop right? I bet 4 gigs of RAM should be enough to use Photoshop efficiently. For (mainly) casual use, I'm sure 4 gig is enough. Although I don't use Photoshop or anything like that, I can get by with 4 gig for casual use. I don't want or need a super powerful PC.
 
Latvija27
If 4GB isn't enough you should buy a 1TB hard drive like a My book elite.
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Only 1TB is that all?

Say hello to my storage solution.
4x4TB in RAID 5.
Capture.PNG
 
^ Pfft, try 8x4TB in RAID 50.

But as far as OP is concerned, yes you should be able to get by with 4 GB. The editing programs might be pushing it, but as long as you're just using it for casual use (i.e. not editing super high resolution images on a regular basis), you should be fine.
 
Yeah, 8 GB would be a noticable improvement when it comes to video editing. But unless you're thinking about churning out videos for a Youtube channel on a frequent basis, or you're trying to edit a feature-length film, 4 GB is probably still tolerable.
 
Chikane
Thanks for the reply's guys

@Naveek Darkroom.. SVs Means Sony Vegas :) Which is my favorite program since it lets you edit videos and songs all kinds of stuff :bowdown:
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From what the others are saying, maybe 4 gig to run Vegas could work if you're not doing hardcore stuff. If you're only doing light work Photoshop/Vegas, I guess 4 gig could suffice.
 
4gb will suffice. I've been operating off this 2009 iMac for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere. Slowdowns can happen over the course of time. Go for 6GB. I can't see myself going back to 4gb RAM for any future computer I purchase.

Edit: I also operate off a 4gb 2010 Macbook (white) and find it performs better in graphics delivery than my desktop (if that helps at all).
 
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I've personally used Sony Vegas for some small amateur projects before on 4GB. Though admittedly, this was maybe back around 2006 so I was working with an older version of SV running on Windows XP, so maybe the memory overhead was a bit less than what you might experience with a more modern version of SV running on a modern OS.
 
I used to use Vegas all the time on my old XPS and it ran fine on 4 gigs as far as I can remember. This was also around 2006(-2010) though.
 
If you're running on a 64 bit system, I personally think 4GB might not be enough or perhaps just enough to make it run those heavy media editing software.
 
For each of your requirements except for editing 4GB is plenty, but editing video will almost always benefit from more RAM (except for the most extreme amounts). If you can get 16GB you'd benefit from it, but whether or not you need it is a different question. I bought a MacBook Air (which admittedly has a PCIe SATA which is pretty quick, but not x4 NVMe quick of course) a couple of years ago because I needed a small, light laptop for word processing and didn't bother to upgrade the 4GB RAM, it's absolutely fine for my purposes but if I'd intended to edit video on it I'd want much more than 4GB.
 
If you are using things like Photoshop, 4GB of RAM will be enough, unless you plan on working with a large number of layers, in which case you will start to hit the PC's limits. 6GB of RAM will be what I advise you to get, 8GB if you want breathing room. I personally run on 8GB of RAM myself, and have never topped out the RAM usage, and I do a lot of stuff in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Side note: I remember using Photoshop on awful school computers with only 512MB of RAM. Dark times, those were.
 
Word of advice from someone who only has a 2GB Ram Macbook (from 2008? 2007?) I can barely run Photoshop CS2 on this without using actual memory from my hard drive, and I can't imagine running something like Sony Vegas on this. I'd say 4GB is juust barely enough. A little more would be better, but you might be able to get by.
 

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