Computers are commonly coming with at least a gigabyte of memory in them now, and sometimes people will add memory to computers so they have two, even four gigabytes of memory.  More memory is better, right?  Not always.  If you are thinking about upgrading to the much-maligned Windows Vista, everyone will tell you to make sure you have sufficient memory.  Two gigabytes is a great starting point, and four gigabytes will allow you to run several large applications at the same time.  However, if you have four gigabytes of memory in your computer, it’s impossible to use all of it.  This article will hopefully inform you of some pitfalls and caveats to keep in mind before you cram all those slots in your computer with more memory.

The operating system you have at home, which might be Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X, or Linux, are all 32-bit operating systems.  The original switch to 32-bit operating systems happened with the release of Windows 95.  All 32-bit operating systems, by design, can only address, at the maximum, 4 gigabytes of memory (2³² for you math whizzes out there).  That’s it.  Even if you can add more memory than this to your computer, it will still only report that you have 4 gigabytes.  That’s all the computer can use.

What’s even worse?  If you currently have four gigabytes of memory in your computer, you won’t even be able to use all of that.  That’s because the hardware in your computer, like your video card, network card, and other expansions cards, have memory too, and they need the ability to have it “addressed” by your computer.  For example, if you have a video card with 512 megabytes of memory on it, surprise!  Now you only have 3 ½ gigabytes of memory to use for what you want to use it for.  There are few technical ways to improve the situation, and those that exist only work for high-end server applications.

What’s the solution?  64-bit computing.  All major operating system manufacturers (and very quietly in the consumer sector) have now released 64-bit versions of their operating systems to the market, but they will only work with the very latest computers (such as the Intel Core 2 and AMD’s Athlon 64).  Some 64-bit operating systems still limit memory expansion to a degree (such as 8 gigabytes in Windows Vista Home Basic).  Theoretically, though, the 64-bit architecture can address 2⁶⁴ bytes, or 17,179,869,184 gigabytes (16 exabytes) of memory!  Besides the ability to upgrade your memory greater than 4 gigabytes, there are few performance benefits and more incompatibility worries at this time to make such a drastic switch.

So what’s the bottom line?  Without an upgrade to a computer with a 64-bit processor and a 64-bit operating system, you will never be able to have more than four gigabytes of memory.  As this is an obvious limitation, watch for 64-bit computing to become popular throughout the next few years.

If you’re like most people, you treat your right mouse button the way non-smokers treat the cigarette lighter in their cars. You ignore it. But like the non-smoking driver who gets a CD-player or a cellular phone and suddenly finds the lighter indispensable, once you learn how to use the right mouse button, you’ll find you can’t do without right-click either.

That right button on your mouse is not there for mere decoration.  When you use it (an action called right-clicking), a menu of items will pop up telling you what actions you can perform, and shows you shortcuts you can use to breeze through everyday tasks.

While the left button is limited to selecting an item or launching an program, the right mouse button is smart enough to tell you what you need to know when. The right-click menu is context sensitive.  This means that the menu of items changes depending on what you right-click and where you are when you right-click it. If you right-click the My Computer icon, for example, you’ll get different options on the right-click menu than you will if you right-click a Web page or a blank part of your desktop.

Right-click is especially handy when you come across something unfamiliar or confusing because the right-click menu will usually tell you what you can do with whatever obstacle you come across.  This is why learning to right-click is a good habit to develop. Don’t worry — nothing will break. At the very worst, nothing will happen. At the best, however, you’ll find the clue you need to get beyond feeling stumped, or a shortcut that makes it easier to get the things you want to do done.

Here are some quick right-click scenarios to get you started:

You can use right-clicking in your My Documents folder to quickly copy, paste, or delete files.  Most people use the menus to do this work, but with a right-click you can do the same things faster.  Simply right-click a folder in your My Documents.  You could delete it simply by selecting “Delete”.  You could also select “Copy”, and then open a drive for your portable USB drive, and Right-click “Paste” to easily copy the files without having to drag and drop.

You can also right-click on an empty white space in your My Documents folder to arrange your files by modification date, or by size.  This can help you find that file that you’ve been looking for.

On a Web page, you can use right-click to do a number of things–move forward and backward between pages you’ve browsed, print a page, or add it to your list of favorites.

Once you get into the right-click habit, you’ll settle into your favorite right-click scenarios, and you’ll find you discover new ones along the way.