CompTIA A+® Complete Deluxe Study Guide:Exams 220-701 (Essentials) and 220-702 (Practical Application)

7.7. Optimizing Windows

Let's face it. Windows is a resource hog. The more hardware a computer has (memory, hard disk space, and so on), the more resources Windows will use. You can never have enough memory. Toward that end, Microsoft developed for Windows its own virtual memory technology. Virtual memory is the general term for a type of computer technology where hard disk space is used as a kind of backup memory.

Real World Scenario: Why Do We Have Virtual Memory? People wonder this all the time: "My computer has two gigs of RAM. Why would I need more?" Like many other things in the computer industry, virtual memory was born out of necessity. Fairly early on in personal computer evolution, it was decided that a computer would never need more ...