Windows 7: Necessary amount of RAM

They lied big time. All you do is remove 6 screws to take the back cover off,

Documentation

then just swap out the installed memory for the stuff you bought,

Documentation

They were right about one thing though, it isn't a regular PC. It is nothing more than a laptop made with laptop components, built into the monitor.

P.S. As far as the memory goes according to the specs for it,

AnandTech - Dell Inspiron One 2320: Stuck in the Middle With You

it takes DDR3 1333 ram, which you can pick up 8 GB (2x4 GB) for $40 or less,



Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Memory, Laptop Memory, 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM, 8GB (2 x 4GB)

I have an older laptop with Win 7 and only 1 GB of RAM. It runs really good. You will be find with 4 GB.

Here's what MS says Windows 7 system requirements - Microsoft Windows
For 32bit or 64bit 4GB would be better and run quite well/ note 32bit would only recognize about 3.5GB due to the 32bit OS limitation.
See Stormy's post. That is a ridiculous price!

4GB is plenty. For years I ran on 3GBs - now I have a new system with 8GB and really see no big difference. Half of my RAM is now empty most of the time. It is not even used for caching. Example - and this system has been running all day:

I've seen a lot of systems sold this way, especially in the last year or so since the bottom has fallen out on RAM prices.

My theory is that companies are having trouble unloading the smaller-sized modules. After all, who's going to want 2 X 2GB (4GB total) when 2 X 4GB (8GB total) costs only a few bucks more? (At retail, anyway.) Since they don't want to get stuck with a warehouse full of rinky-dink RAM they pretty much force you to either take the smaller ones off their hands or pay through the nose for what you really want.

Great advice. Dell could do it for you for peanuts, but then what would they do with the pair of 2GB modules? Buy the model you wanted, do the upgrade yourself if necessary (like ignatzatsonic mentioned), then spend the $660 net you saved on something else.

I can remember 10 years ago 512mg was a lot of RAM!

2-4gbs of ram would be efficient enough for Windows 7 32bit or 64bit.I upgraded my uncles pc from vista to 7 and it has 3gbs of ram and runs 10x faster with 7 then vista. He's really happy with it. I basically cleaned out his pc and tried vista but it was still slow so i told him to get win 7. His pc runs like butter now and i did all the management including putting a anti virus like avast,codecs,video card drivers and cleaned the inside of his pc at no charge. All free

On 4 GB of RAM it should run perfectly fine. My Computer Engineering class has about 20 machines, all Dell and all outdated, each with no more than 2 GB of RAM apiece and they all run Windows 7 fine. However I think you're getting kinda screwed by Dell with those prices.

since you won't be using any memory intensive programs... 4GB should be sufficient to handle all your requirements.... anything more than that will not help you much... if you feel the need for greater performance then I would recommend you to get an SSD instead of the extra RAM

Absolutely. That's the way to go. Get a Crucial M4 for a hundred bucks and your system will really fly.