patrickdaley.com

I had been running 4GB of memory in my 32-bit version of Windows XP for a while even though I have a 512MB video card and Wndows only recogizes about 2.8GB.  Why?  Memory is cheap and I wanted to run two pairs in dual channel so it was just easier to use four 1GB sticks to do this.  I was fine with the fact that Windows was never actually going to acknowledge all of it, as it mapped some of it off to things like my video card.  This article blows the doors off of this long held belief by indicating that it’s simply a Microsoft licensing issue that prevents you from addressing more than 4GB.  To give an analogy, I have a plain vanilla Nvidia 6800 card that I bought on purpose because I knew the chipset was the same as the higher end 6800 cards and that through a BIOS hack I could unlock more pipelines on the card.  This has often been the case throughout the history of technology; it’s cheaper for a manufacturer to make one product, but disable/enable various features to sell it at different price points.  For a really interesting read on this subject follow the link.

http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=notes/windows/license/memory.htm

1 – Wedding two months away.

2 – House hunting.

3 – Busiest time of the year in the Legislature.

4 – Studying for a computer certification.

Throw in trying to maintain a workout routine and there’s not a lot of time for much else.  Already looking forward to the fall……