Fast Technology

Embarrassing admission of the month: before last Friday, I'd never replaced my own RAM.

Honestly, the explanation's simple: I tend to buy new laptops before I consider upgrading RAM. The last time I considered a RAM boost was probably a decade ago, and back then I paid to have it installed. I also found the idea of RAM slightly less immediately appealing. Upgrading a hard drive? Sure, lots of storage space. New processor? Faster speeds. But RAM...for many people, it might lack a certain sexiness or essential quality that justifies the upgrade.

It took my friend persistently reminding me that his RAM upgrade on the same laptop model (a late 2008 aluminum MacBook) paid huge dividends on performance to finally pull the trigger. I'm glad I did. Even then, I waited about six months. My computer got progressively slower with each OS X update, until Lion gave me endless spinning wheels with only one program open.

A quick search on Amazon gave me a bargain: Crucial's 4GB upgrade kit with two 2GB modules cost just $26, or $29 after tax and shipping. A no-brainer. For older laptops, getting RAM costs practically nothing at all.

How did I know what to get? I found a quick reference guide for my own laptop online, which I also used to order the RAM to the specific description and speed. Make sure you've got those details correct, since RAM comes in many speeds and versions.

Yes, upgrading RAM is easy -- it's like plugging in a game cartridge. But, it's like plugging in a game cartridge on a console whose cartridge slot is often locked up under a ton of screws and tucked next to circuitry. (For those who are tech-savvy, you can laugh away; this is for the uninitiated and the apprehensive.) The RAM slots on my MacBook lay under an aluminum panel and eight screws, which required a screwdriver so small I had to borrow it from fellow co-worker and PC guru Rich Brown. Even then, it wasn't a perfect fit. You'll probably have to pay a visit to a hardware store or look online.

I also had to pop out and remove the MacBook's battery (the 2008 model's battery isn't integrated). With this much fiddling, I felt a little nervous about exposing the circuit boards underneath. If you feel the same way, then pay someone to do it. Still, it wasn't hard to do.

The biggest concern? Safely storing those tiny screws. I laid aside a plastic dish (wrapping from a random gadget) to hold the screws, and reminded myself where each one had gone -- some were differently sized. Don't lose them; finding a replacement would be a huge challenge.

Before diving in, I touched a piece of metal outside the laptop to ground myself. Everyone recommends you do this to avoid damaging your equipment. Why not be safe?

I found the RAM and popped it out by squeezing two plastic side pieces, then pulled each one out and inserted the two new RAM modules, holding them by the sides, and breathing deeply like I was playing a game of Operation. After that, I popped the metal lid back on, screwed the panel together, and turned my MacBook back on.

Doubling the RAM is a notable improvement. No, my laptop's not technically faster, but programs open with less spinning-wheel action, and I can switch between programs easily. It's cleaner-operating. For $29, I've bought myself a little breath of fresh air for my aging laptop.

I'd recommend you do the same, if you can find RAM as cheaply. And be sure to consult all official documentation from your laptop manufacturer before proceeding, or being near an expert who knows what they're doing, just to be safe.

Long live cheap upgrades!

What should I take on next?

Darren Yates gets snap-happy testing to see if smartphones have consigned digital compact cameras to history.

A few years ago, you might have been lucky and had a digital camera in your pocket to pull out and grab those once-in-a-lifetime moments – if you remembered to take it with you. These days, everyone just whips out their smartphones and starts snapping away. I keep telling people you have to think of smartphones as portable computers and in terms of features, they either have or are about to knock a range of devices out of the market from MP3 players to GPS devices. And you have to wonder whether digital compact cameras are next. These cameras are being squeezed by smartphones on one side and ever-decreasing prices for digital SLR cameras on the other. While it's highly doubtful that a compact camera will ever match a digital SLR model for image quality, it's worth asking the question have digital compact cameras met their match in smartphones. So we decided to test it out, comparing two brand-new digital still cameras – Panasonic's $449 Lumix DMC-TZ30 and Canon's $399 Digital IXUS 500 HS - against Samsung's $598-unlocked Galaxy SII smartphone.

The one area where digital compact cameras have really leapt ahead in recent times has been video capture. Gone are the days of small video frame sizes, no optical zoom and no image stabilisation during video capture. Both of the compact cameras we tested feature full HD (1920x1080-pixel or “1080p”) capture with optical image stabilisation removing hand wobbles and full optical zoom during video capture. The Panasonic captured its video in AVCHD format, which is very similar to Blu-ray movies in its layout, but it also offers progressive-scan capture, a technique that results in smooth, clean video on big-screen TVs. The Canon stores its movies as straight MOV files and although it uses the same highly-efficient H.264 video compression as the Panasonic, its quality isn't quite as good, particularly with horizontal panning shots. It also captures CD-style WAV audio rather than more efficient AAC or Dolby AC3 format.

Not to be outdone, smartphones capture video too. However, capturing 1080p video requires at least a dual-core processor and they're still rare in smartphones, making the Galaxy SII even more noteworthy. Typical phones with a 1GHz single-core processor will only capture 720p (1280x720-pixel) video at best. The Galaxy SII uses H.264 video compression for its 1080p video capture but without optical zoom and image stabilisation, it's not quite as versatile as the compact cameras. However, provided you can hold it steady, the SII's video quality is noticeably smoother than the IXUS 500 HS, particularly on horizontal panning shots, but the SII's auto-focus tends to “hunt” more and seems slower to react to changes in object distance.

It still seems to be in our collective buying consciousness that lots of megapixels equals better photos. News of Nokia's new 41-megapixel (41MP) PureView 808 smartphone certainly suggests that. But far more important is the quality of the lens – you can have as many megapixels as you want but if the lens is rubbish, the photos will still look awful. Most of us only print photos at the standard 6x4-inch size and for that, you really only need 3MP images. Even the cheap $149-prepaid HTC Wildfire S smartphone can snap off 5MP photos while the Galaxy SII has an 8MP image sensor.

But again, without optical zoom or image stabilisation, it takes more work to grab high-quality snaps with a smartphone. The new Lumix TZ30 captures 14MP images through a 20X-optical zoom lens with optical image stabilisation, the IXUS 500HS is just a bit behind, capturing 10MP images through a 12X-optical optically-stabilised zoom lens but it's also smaller too.

Another factor that makes a difference is the physical size of the lens – the larger the lens, the more light hits that image sensor. It's one more reason why digital SLR cameras take better quality pictures again. Even so, the SII again gives the IXUS 500 HS plenty to think about and it's only the image stabilisation and optical zoom that keeps the 500 HS just marginally ahead.

And in the end, that's how compact cameras are staving off defeat at the hands of smartphones – by offering higher-end features and in many cases, they look headed for a demarcation dispute with dedicated video cameras. At the moment, the new Lumix DMC-TZ30 looks to be the compact camera to beat and it'll be some time before you see a smartphone match it. On the other hand, Canon's IXUS 500 HS isn't quite in the same league and if you had a Galaxy SII, it's only the 500 HS' optical zoom and image stabilisation you'd miss.

Of course, the one drawback for having your smartphone do everything is battery life – it's well known that few things suck the life out of a smartphone battery like using the GPS and capturing 1080p video wouldn't be too far behind.

But in the end, it's pretty hard to escape the convenience of being able to rattle off pics and video clips with your smartphone – just don't expect your smartphone to match a good compact digital camera, unless you're carrying something like a Galaxy SII or better.

Ultrabooks are what Intel thinks of as the future of laptops, and why not, if they can make these laptops ultra-thin, light, ultra-responsive and optionally include an optical drive, why would you lug around a fat, heavy, beast of a computer?

Currently most Ultrabooks offer an 11in - 13in screen but more variations in the specification on offer are coming from various suppliers. And here is the rub with the component makers. Because of the tightness of space available in the Ultrabook form factor many of the components used within have to be custom made and shaped to shoehorn into the uni-body designs.

Manufacturers like to mass produce to benefit from the economies of scale. With more and more variations in the Ultrabook specification being made by various manufacturers to establish some competitive advantage (differentiation) it's hampering the component factories' mass production runs.

Component makers have been reported to be worried by the demand for this new form of laptop not kicking in and sales taking off, and a run of parts made for one particular Ultrabook most probably cannot be used in another. That equals waste and loss for the component manufacturer if they have any inventories built up. Reducing the run size increases cost and makes Ultrabooks more expensive and consequently less popular - a vicious business cycle. This is another illustration in economics how expectations are so important to outcomes.

In the tablet field we have the same problems, customers want thinner, lighter, yet more powerful systems and some parts have to be custom made to fit particular models. Here there is the added dimension of competing chipsets for Windows devices - Wintel or WoA (Windows on ARM).

However news just in from Lite-On regarding the possible revenue from Ultrabooks is very positive. The company suffered a significant income slump in 2011 due to the Thai floods. Yet citing growth of cloud computing, smartphones and Ultrabooks, positive US economic data as well as the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, Lite-On see lots of opportunity for revenues to pick up in 2012.

A question mark still hangs over the Ultrabook form factor, but with Intel pouring billions of dollars into the idea, we wouldn't want to bet against it.