Memory lane – make the most of it

It looks as though mega-cheap memory is on the way out, which is a bit of a shame, says David Dorn.

I do like to keep an eye on RAM prices, not least because, as regular readers will know, I’ve always thought that the more RAM you can shovel into your PC, the better it will run. Well, it looks like it’s not going to be as cheap as it was before Christmas, when you could pick up a 256MB stick of PC-133 DRAM for under £20 if you looked around a little.

In fact, RAM pricing is on the up – it’s moved around 20% upover during the last week, to give pricing for that same 256MB stick of around £70. That’s still pretty good value, of course (especially compared to the £600 for 4MB of RAM I paid in 1985), but it’s a long way away from the mega cheap pre-xmas pricing.

Thebad news is that the trend is going to continue skywards as RAM manufacturers get pricing back on an even keel for them – we have, truthfully, been buying RAM at less than it costs to make it for some time now. The RAM manufacturers are hoping, it seems, to capitalise on DDR (Double Data Rate) RAM, which is growing in popularity. That being the case, our best advice is to get what you need as soon as possible, before prices rise much further.

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David Dorn