[joblessjunkie]

But why do our computers have to come with 4GB+ of RAM, when 1GB might suffice? It's an circular argument to claim that it's OK to use lots of RAM simply because the computer comes with lots of RAM.

After a manufacturer begrudgingly provides the RAM that developers refuse to conserve, we shouldn't then use the presence of this additional RAM to use even more.

Your friend's anger at application waste is justified. Witness new devices like the iPad that survive with much less RAM than a desktop -- just 512MB, which happens to be enough to support an excellent browser.

[dmbass]

Are you kidding about the iPad? It definitely suffers from lack of RAM. Almost every time you change tabs, it has to reload the page.

[mburns]

We use that memory because we do more things faster. Of course we could page to disk whenever we want to use more than 1GB of memory, or render from CPU instead of keeping uncompressed versions in memory to lower footprint... Or we could have faster computers. Consumers prefer the faster computer option.

[joblessjunkie]

Sure, using more RAM to make things faster is a fine thing. But I think you give developers too much credit: many apps use lots of RAM for no other reason than lack of care.

Which of course can also be to the benefit of consumers: better a RAM-hogging release today than a memory-efficient release next month (if ever).