Windows will pre-emptively page applications to disk. It has done this for a long time. As for memory, 2GB should run just fine, but 64bit windows 7 will take advantage of more than 3.5GB of RAM. In fact we have laptops running around with 8GB where this wasn't really possible with 64bit Windows XP (poor driver/application support). <br>
<br>One thing that I have noticed is that Windows 7 seems to be much better with more than one CPU core. <br><br>Dan<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Bruce Ediger <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bediger@stratigery.com" target="_blank">bediger@stratigery.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">At work, there's a pilot project to upgrade to Windows 7 (and IE 9,<br>
we're currently stuck on IE7). My group's pilot project designee<br>
had to upgrade her laptop to 4 *Gigabytes* RAM to be able to run<br>
Windows 7 and some applications.<br>
<br>
Since it's impossible to get true answers at work, what exactly does<br>
Windows 7 do with 4 *Gigabytes* RAM? My current laptop, an elderly<br>
HP/Compaq N8000, has 2 Gig, and it just doesn't ever swap, as near as I<br>
can tell, unless I deliberately write a program to allocate all memory.<br>
What does Windows 7 do that's so special? Is there any other answer<br>
than "We upgrade because Microsoft tells up to"?<br>
<br>
On a software engineering note, how does Microsoft (the development<br>
staff) deal with the code base that uses that much memory? That size<br>
code base has to be exhausting to maintain - how do they counteract<br>
the human tendency towards shortcuts and quick fixes?<br>
<br>
Signed,<br>
Befuddled in Denver<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
clue mailing list: <a href="mailto:clue@cluedenver.org">clue@cluedenver.org</a><br>
For information, account preferences, or to unsubscribe see:<br>
<a href="http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue" target="_blank">http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br>