>>Compressed RAM is not a new idea. It has been available on Macs for quite some
 time.
>>The problem is, how do you make it compatible with all software. Many lower le
vel
>>drivers need redundant compression code as they do not use common memory routi
nes.
>>Obviously this problem is far more prevalent on Intel platforms than most othe
rs.

>My question is, is memory compression worth the work. Memory, like disk is so
>cheap now. Out of memory? Just buy more.
>Don

Where do you live??  Memory is the one part of a computer that has
*NOT* come done in price in the last few years.  Partly because our
government keeps putting tarrifs on the chips, and partly because of
other industry problems.

Hard drive prices are plumetting, and do so regularly.  A year ago, a
dollar per meg for a good SCSI hard drive was a good price.  Now you
can get them for less than fifty cents a meg in some cases.  I
remember four years ago that 16MB of RAM was going to cost me just
under $500.  It's still over $500 (higher than it was then, actually).

I wish it would come down, because I've been waiting for some time to
add more memory to both my machines.

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  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
       --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
     NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4, PC532,
                           DEC pmax (MIPS R2k/3k), DEC/AXP (Alpha)
     NetBSD ports in progress: VAX and others...
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