I was looking at the system statistics of my Windows 10 desktop computer today and noticed something interesting. The total size of the RAM or Memory for the computer is 4.00GB, but the usable part is only 3.42GB. Memory temporarily holds programs, the operating system and user data while the computer is running. When memory space runs out, the items get moved to the hard drive which is much larger. If the computer needs data not in memory, it gets moved from the hard drive back into memory, This process of moving data back and forth slows down the computer and should be avoided if possible.
One thing you can do is use a SSD (Solid State Drive) instead of an IDE or ATA drive. These are faster. The other thing you can do is add as much memory as you can.
In my case, I have 4GB and not all of it is available. So why isn’t it all available? In lower cost computers the Graphics or video adapter steals the system memory for it’s use. Higher-end graphics adapters have their own memory on-board and usually perform faster than ones like mine.