Question About The Ram Configuration

[Chip]

My (properly configured) modern Linux desktop has 512MB of RAM, and Firefox 3 alone is currently using 200 of it.
I've used recent builds, yeah, and recent builds of WebKit and every WebKit based browser I could get to compile. They all end up gobbling RAM at some point; the modern web is bloated, and that's not gonna change anytime soon.

No, modern web browsers just take advantage of the piles of RAM that everybody has these days. The pages themselves aren't that big - nearly all are <1MB. It's just that Firefox caches everything you look at and eventually it adds up.

When I first start Firefox 3 (with several addons installed) it's using less than 40MB of memory. Properly configured, Firefox could easily run on the Pandora without hogging all the available RAM.

The fact is, there is (almost) nothing you can do with 1GB of RAM that you can't do with 128MB. It takes a bit more creativity, but it is well within reason. You can run a full featured web browser, a full featured word processor, spreadsheet application, programming environment, image editor, video transcoding software, etc. all with only 128MB of RAM. Maybe not all at the same time, but you get the idea.

We'd all love to have 512MB or more RAM on the Pandora, but that is not an option. It is also not necessary.

 

[TaG]

You can also limit the cache ram of firefox:
Type 'about:config' in firefox
edit the 'browser.cache.memory.capacity' key

That might make it behave on Pandora. Note it doesn't limit total ram but cache ram.

 

[dblank]

The fact is, there is (almost) nothing you can do with 1GB of RAM that you can't do with 128MB. It takes a bit more creativity, but it is well within reason.

We'd all love to have 512MB or more RAM on the Pandora, but that is not an option. It is also not necessary.

If by creativity you mean I have to limit how I use my computers, how many programs I have running, how many browser tabs I can have open at once, avoiding some media rich websites, avoiding some programs and operations altogether, yeah, 128MB is more than enough.

I'm not going to let the lack of RAM keep me from purchasing a Pandora, but I'm not going to fool myself either;
128MB limits how I use my N800, and it will limit how I use the Pandora.

512MB *is* an option, it just happens to be an expensive, complicated option.

I think 256MB would be plenty for most of my usage, 16MB might be plenty for someone else, either way, who are you or I to say what's enough for anyone other than ourselves?

I really don't care for people telling me how I should or shouldn't use my computers.

This discussion could go on forever. I'll continue to want/need more than 128MB, and you'll continue to tell me I'm doing it all wrong, the device isn't made for that, I haven't "properly configured" things, the screen's too small for that anyway, why would I want to do that, write my own program that uses less memory, just use a laptop, etc.

I'll go ahead and bow out of this pointless discussion for now

 

[craigix]

I'm not really sure why the newer browsers need so much RAM, I mean we were running them in the 90's with 8MB of RAM, and the DS has a browser and that has 4MB.

That said Firefox3 never seems to go above 90-100meg on my system (1980x1200 Laptop), but still that is an insane amount of memory to be using for a browser, I'm pretty sure due to the lower resolution and with some tweaks the Pandora can lower these things to less than half, even a quarter, of what you see on your PC.

Now I'm looking Trillian also manages to use 11meg! Easymessage uses just 800k to do the same thing. Crazy.

 

[atomicthumbs]

I'm not really sure why the newer browsers need so much RAM, I mean we were running them in the 90's with 8MB of RAM, and the DS has a browser and that has 4MB.

The DS browser requires an expansion pack to go into the second slot. That adds 8MB. Still, pretty good for Opera (which usually takes around 40MB on my system).

 

[TaG]

If by creativity you mean I have to limit how I use my computers, how many programs I have running, how many browser tabs I can have open at once, avoiding some media rich websites, avoiding some programs and operations altogether, yeah, 128MB is more than enough.

I'm not going to let the lack of RAM keep me from purchasing a Pandora, but I'm not going to fool myself either;
128MB limits how I use my N800, and it will limit how I use the Pandora.

512MB *is* an option, it just happens to be an expensive, complicated option.

I think 256MB would be plenty for most of my usage, 16MB might be plenty for someone else, either way, who are you or I to say what's enough for anyone other than ourselves?

I really don't care for people telling me how I should or shouldn't use my computers.

This discussion could go on forever. I'll continue to want/need more than 128MB, and you'll continue to tell me I'm doing it all wrong, the device isn't made for that, I haven't "properly configured" things, the screen's too small for that anyway, why would I want to do that, write my own program that uses less memory, just use a laptop, etc.

I'll go ahead and bow out of this pointless discussion for now

But all 'computers' limit what you can do. You can't run Halo on a PS3 - that doesn't make the PS3 bad.
You can't run some of the latest pc games without a high-spec graphics cards.
128MB means software developers need to be creative and users can't have everything open that you would on a desktop pc - but thats not what the Pandora is. It's not a case of telling you what you can do with your computers, just telling you what your Pandora is likely to be capable of.

I think it is part of the fun of the journey to see what the whole of the community can get the Pandora to do.

And finally - don't forget this started life as a gaming computer that is capable of many pc type tasks [queue Prophet ], not a full blown pc or a full blown latest gen console.

 

[sindbad]

I would much rather expect the small screen to be a problem with desktop-like activities.

Pc software is very large also partly because it needs to support a wide range of hardware, which is not the case for the pandora. The other two culprits for high memory usage are caching and picture/textures, both of which can be easily reduced to comfortable sizes.

You'll be able to use several browser tabs and several apps at the same time. I wouldn't worry so much.

 

[cb88]

mentioned word just because it was a modern style program that runs on pretty old hardware and still meets many people's needs i use mp or nano most of the time myself but i don't expect my grandparents to.

i really do hate that programs use loads of ram for no reason.... heh... ie firefox is using cache but on a high speed connection it might actually be faster just to re downlaod it...

quote dblank "I don't see what Word running in 16MB of RAM 10+ years ago has to do with today, you can still run that old version of Word if you want. Maybe you don't want or need any of the new features, but others do."

it has every thing to do with programs today and what "feature" is it that word 97 doesn't have exactly? perhaps word 97 has a few rough edges but i haven't seen a reason for an upgrade since word 2000 .... and i am pretty sure that still ran in 32mb not that i even run windows for that matter anymore myself

modern web bloated? well that would only be the javascript java and flash the rest hasn't really changed try disableing javascript java and flash and whatever other *content* and i bet firefox will still hog your ram

shoot then comodore64 even has a web browser and it only has 64kb ram... sure if you wanna scroll up you have to redownload the page but i think most people could live with that

 

[dblank]

it has every thing to do with programs today and what "feature" is it that word 97 doesn't have exactly? perhaps word 97 has a few rough edges but i haven't seen a reason for an upgrade since word 2000 .... and i am pretty sure that still ran in 32mb not that i even run windows for that matter anymore myself

I'd imagine there's quite a few features Word 97 doesn't have, surely they've added *something* useful (to some) in 10 years? but I don't personally run Word, or even Windows, so I'm really not the best person to ask. Perhaps I'm wrong and they've just added 10 years worth of completely useless crap, *shrug*.

I don't particularly care about Word, I'm quite content with vim / ascii.

QUOTE
modern web bloated? well that would only be the javascript java and flash the rest hasn't really changed try disableing javascript java and flash and whatever other *content* and i bet firefox will still hog your ram



It's actually a good deal better, at least on my N800, and it also really helps the weak CPU with Flash disabled.
I run Flashblock, strip ads, disable animations, tweak the crap out of things, and connect through a remote proxy that compresses images. This all helps save RAM/CPU/bandwidth, I wouldn't bother with all the effort if it didn't.
I spend entirely too much time tweaking things on all my computers, generally working around hardware limitations, it's kind of pathetic

I typically use Dillo for my browsing needs, as it's the fastest thing I've found, and uses very little memory, but it doesn't support Flash/CSS/Java/Javascript/Animated GIFs/etc/etc.

Generally I don't care much for all those things (though I'd *love* to see JS and CSS in Dillo), but I'm always on the lookout for a browser that'll run with all the fancy crap, without gobbling up so much RAM/CPU.

There's so many uses for more RAM than just web browsing, my main reason for wanting more mostly involves audio processing/synthesis/editing/etc.

I'm thrilled the Pandora has a faster CPU than my N800, but bummed the other main bottleneck (for me) remains.
Honestly if I hadn't owned an N800 for nearly a year, compiled / ported hundreds of appications for it, and tried doing things most would have no interest in, I probably wouldn't think of it nearly as much. I just want to do alot more with most of my devices than what was ever intended, I can't help myself!

The RAM on the N800 is my biggest gripe, but I still love the heck out of it (it's one of my main hobbies), and I'm sure I'll love the heck out of the Pandora even more.. hopefully my N800 doesn't get *too* jealous.

It'll be great to see all the software that comes out specifically for the Pandora, perhaps they'll even distract me from all the big bloated "desktop sized" apps I wish I could run!

Maybe in the future someone will offer a service to mod the devices with more RAM?

Well.. I'm off to dream of a Pandora with 1GB of RAM.. oh and DVI or HDMI output with some sweet, high res video glasses.

 

[Hotcooler]

I believe 128megs is enough. If it's not - just use fast SD cards and streap\swap content on\from it. And for the browser - tou just wont be able to open 30 pages and instatly cycle between them without swapping, not enough mem for so much caching. But for 3-5 pages - I believe it's more than enough.

 

[CCmachined]

what i would like to know:
would it be possible to upgrade the ram after purchase? i'm guessing the 128MB is soldered onto the board like laptops used to be a few years ago. (and most laptop GPUs are today.)

 

[sindbad]

It actually is in the SoC, so absolutely no way to upgrade the existing ram. I don't know about adding ram, but I suspect high power usage and lack of physical room to be a problem.

 

[Chip]

what i would like to know:
would it be possible to upgrade the ram after purchase? i'm guessing the 128MB is soldered onto the board like laptops used to be a few years ago. (and most laptop GPUs are today.)

If you read the rest of this thread, you'll discover that the system memory is built onto the OMAP SoC. It is not removable or upgradable. The 128MB version of the OMAP3530 is the only version currently available. In the future TI plans to manufacture 256MB versions and possibly larger ones down the road. In order to replace the OMAP SoC without destroying the board you would need a BGA rework station, a steady hand, and a lot of luck. For all intents and purposes, it is not possible.

So basically it's either 128MB RAM or nothing. I don't foresee this limiting the Pandora significantly. 128MB RAM is enough to do nearly anything with a well written program.

 

[cb88]

@dblank they haven't added anything useful that i know of only made it completely unusable ...have you seen the ribbons interface of office 2008.... most likely one of the worst user interfaces in the world

i am pretty sure about all they have added is 3d graphs (pretty but worthless) and some semblance of speech recognition (doesn't work) and changed the document format around so it is harder for openoffice to use etc... and that is about it oh and they uped the ram requirement so you'll need a new computer at least 100times as fast with 50 times the ram or more