I really can't even use a computer that's less than 4 gb these days, especially once chrome gets it's grubby hands all over my RAM. Just running baseline I find that most windows systems take up about two GB of RAM, and after you load up chrome, word, whatever; it hits the 4GB+ range. I mean, we're starting to see phones with 2GB of ram, it's completely unacceptable for a modern tablet.
>> I mean, we're starting to see phones with 2GB of ram, it's completely unacceptable for a modern tablet.
I run Chrome with a lot of tabs open on my Asus Vivotab Note and I don't really feel the pain of having only 2GB. I'm one of those guys with bad habits about closing tabs.
The thing you have to remember -- Atoms are serviceable CPUs, but they're nothing like the Core series. If you're looking to do heavy lifting, you should probably go for a Surface Pro anyways.
I really think this comment is overblown. Until 2-3 months ago, I was using a T400 from 2009. It had 4 gigs of ram. I could happily hum away with Firefox with like 30 tabs open, Chrome with like 10 tabs open, IPython notebook chugging away, and Grooveshark/Flash burning up my cycles. While it certainly was not as smooth or as fast as I would have liked it, it certainly never really held me back.
Current iPads have 1GB of RAM. They also constantly evict background applications and even backgrounded tabs in the web browser. Switching browser tabs on iOS is always a gamble as to whether it'll reload the page or not. This makes it impossible to, for example, write a comment in one tab while referencing some material in a different one with any kind of reliability.
iOS is extremely memory efficient but it comes at a cost which can be quite high for some.
Does it matter? The normal usage patterns for Windows (and OS X) is very different and requires more RAM than the typical usage patterns on an iOS devices
Do you use adblock? Chrome's extensions can eat up more RAM than chrome itself, and you don't always see it as a separate process. I keep my extensions minimal, and can use chrome just fine on a 2 GB system.
8 GB is absolute bare minimum in 2015 (I'd say 2012 but the world seems to disagree). I'd be very hesitant buying something today that didn't have 16 GB. Unfortunately that is quite hard to come by in the ultrabook range.
But 2 GB? And maximum 4 ? Just kills me inside. Way to ruin the device.
I don't have anything with more than 4GB. I use Linux often, but my main driver is a Windows tablet (Acer Iconia W700). I used many applications at a time, including stuff like Eclipse, and occasionally a Debian VM with 2GB assigned. I have no trouble with 4GB of RAM, although I was forced to switch away from Chrome. IE11 and Firefox work great though.
Depends. My development machine is a laptop with 4G of RAM (but a terabyte hard drive). Then again I rarely even fire up X11 when I'm programming, so my needs are pretty sparse.
Most people don't have 2 computers. Also, most people that do have two computers don't know how/don't want to know how to log into their desktop remotely.
Surfing the web or doing any form of multitasking.
But of course, the sad reality is that the only reason there is a 2 GB version is so that they can have a ridiculous premium for the 4 GB version yet still lure customers with the low starting price point.
I wonder if, when the market has matured enough, that there will be honest companies making products that tries to make good mainstream products rather than trying to get away with whatever they can. There is no reason what so ever that there should be any high-end smartphone available for purchase with less than 64 GB of storage.
But now we have 16 GB and, for a $100 GB premium you get, gasp, 32 GB!
Phone storage has not gone up, in many cases down, in the last five years... And that's like 120 years in the tech world.
But hey, 2 GB of ram is certainly enough for the 5 min demo you get in the store...
$100 more for 2x RAM and storage, that doesn't seem like a "ridiculous premium". Unless you mean ridiculous in some other way than the actual dollar amount.
Considering that $100 easily buys you an 8GB so-dimm or an 80 GB intel m.2 ssd at retail prices, I think it is pretty steep for an increase of 2GB of ram and 32GB [ed: whops, 64GB, but still] of storage...
