Buying a laptop - Is the extra GB of RAM worth it?

My wife is a college student and works part time for a financial planner so we've decided to invest in a laptop. Im a teacher and she works part time (i.e. we dont exactly have money flowing out the wazoo) so we're going with a Dell Inspiron (1505). It costs $1,000 and we're trying to decided whether we should upgrade to 2 GB of RAM. She will use a lot of memory-heavy programs (music players, picture editing software, Powerpoint, etc) and I think it would be worth the extra $185 to get the upgrade. That will increase the the cost by ~20%, but if that lets us keep the computer for 5 years instead of 4, its worth it right?

Anyway, I dont know much about computers or the internets so Im calling on all computer geeks - is it worth it?

:hi: Thanks!
-Alec

But before you commit to a price, see if you can get the extra Meg cheaper from a different vendor.

I'm not really much of a 'geek' myself, but I'm not shy about
bugging my geek friends for advice. And that's just about the
sum total of their opinions on RAM.

:hi:

ie 1 2gb chip vs 2 1gb chips..Ram is very important to a happy system

:dunce:

Those are memory-intensive applications, so the more fast RAM memory you have available, the better. If you're going to run Windows Vista, you definitely want 2GB (Vsta supports up to 4GB). Vista is a RAM hog.

There is no single upgrade you can make to your computer that will have more of an impact than more RAM.

You may want to double check the university(if you haven't) the programs now may be direct with the manufacturer. If you only get a GIG the number of memory slots (Most likely 2) will most likely be populated with 2 512MB RAM chips (cheaper for the manufacturer) If/when you decide to upgrade later to two GIG you'll most likely get a double bump cuz you'll have to buy 2 1 gig RAM chips worth of memory and to pull the 512's and either try to sell them or turn them into key-chains.

A good rule of thumb on memory needs... is the Size of the OS, the application, and three times the size of the largest file you may create.

185.00 for an extra GIG is well worth it... if you can afford it. Memory prices typically trend down (a long time ago 64MB was $3500.00) ... For a good website for todays street pricing on memory, check out ramseeker.com (crucial is a a trust worthy brand) There are many listed. You can do it yourself if your savy... but static is the enemy. Make sure you have a at least static wrist strap to ground yourself .... you can get disposable ones.

Good luck

:hi: