Does more RAM = more battery time? (iBook G4)

O

One Sick Puppy

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Hello,

I just bought a new iBook G4 and I barely know how to use it and I know very little about Macs (though I've been a PC tech for several years).

With that said, I bought this little machine for the main purpose of taking notes at school using MS Word, and doing general office tasks, spreadsheets, etc. I've got 256mb of RAM and I was wondering if adding more ram is going to help me much for extending my battery life, boot up time, etc. I figure that if the HDD is not running as much due to more ram, this should help battery life, but with the task I'll be doing when using the battery power (taking notes in MS Word) I wonder if more ram would be of little use. I know that Windows XP likes more ram no matter what you're doing, but I don't know if the same applies to OSX and my iBook.

Thanks!
 
More ram will not extend your battery life. It will make your computer run smoother and a bit quicker. Depending on how long your classes are, and how long your day is, I would bring the power adaptor and sit near an outlet... just in case.
 
Theoretically, no, RAM doesn't extend battery life, but in certain situations, it can help. Technically, you'll be using MORE power, since you've got another RAM chip in there for the system to run power through, although it's probably an undetectable amount -- BUT, having more RAM can decrease the amount of system pageouts (a UNIX term for 'swap files") which make the hard drive activate. The hard drive and the CD-ROM are two of the biggest power consumers in the whole system, so having them as inactive as possible can possibly extend your battery life a percetage point or two.

I can say with a high degree of certainty that adding more RAM will not decrease your battery life any detectable amount.
 
The question now is: what is consuming more energy? The harddisc which is troubled with more pageouts or the additional ram stick?
My impression was a slight increase of the battery life on my ibook G3 600 which had 128mb in the beginning and now enjoys 640mb of ram.
One should also consider the overall energy consumption. The snappier the system, the less anger in your head -> less energy consumption ;)
 
There is no realistic way to compare the power consumption of a Machine with extra RAM against a Machine with Minimum RAM.
Logically, however, the Power saved by not Swapping to the HDD as often would well-and-truely outweigh the power saved by having one less RAM Module.
I don't use a WordProcessor, so I can't speculate on whether MS Word is a Memory-Intensive Program or not, (even though I expect it to be).
Regardless, for the sake of US$100, Maxing out your RAM is always a good idea.
 
The RAM module will consume FAR less power than the hard drive. Moving parts (like the spinning platters and read/write head of the hard drive or the optical laser of the CD drive) will consume the most power, so you can deduce that keeping things that move to a minimum amount of activity will get you the longest battery life.

That's why it's easy to drain your battery watching one DVD on a portable since the DVD drive is constantly spinning and reading.
 
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