[ale] feasibility of motherboard & HD replacement in portable, rather than computer replacement ?

[JK]

Vernard Martin wrote:

> While putting more RAM into a machine will most likely speed it up 
> (almost certainly), you need to determine if that is the real issue. if 
> you run the command "free -m" under a linux shell then you'll see how 
> much free memory in megabytes you have. You'll also want to make sure 
> that the amount of swap you are using is not high as well. That is also 
> given with the "free" command. If you are using swap and most of your 
> RAM is used then you need more RAM.


Though it's important to note that Linux tries to cache as
much as possible in RAM, so the amount of "free" memory is
often quite low, even if most of what's using that memory
is cached code and data that can be immediately re-used
(and is therefore effectively free).  The effective amount
of free RAM is approximated by the sum of the "free" and
"cached" columns in the "free -m" output.

-- JK



-- 
I do not particularly want to go where the money is -
  it usually does not smell nice there. -- A. Stepanov