What is Ram used for

Basically, it's a high speed temporary storage location for a relatively small amount of data which is currently in use by the computer.

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All running applications and other processes use it. Any loaded document, font, or other resource may be partially or fully in RAM as well.

A document which isn't open anywhere on the system doesn't exist in RAM.

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When you access any OS/Application/File, it's loaded into RAM. While it's in RAM, things run quickly compared to accessing your hard drive every step of the way. When you access another process and the RAM is used up, the idle items are written off of the RAM to you hard drive (swap space) to make room for the newly accessed items so they run fast.

This explanation has been over-simplified in order to explain what takes place when you use your computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerdata_storage#Primarystorage

Regards

Stefan

Hey GDF, I can make it even simpler.

RAM is like a car gas tank. Storage= hard disk drive= gas station.

If you have a 10 gallon gas tank, you are going to have to stop and fill up more often, causing your cross country trip to take longer. So if you car gets 30 miles to the gallon, and you are going 3,000, you will need to stop at least 10 times, just to fill up.
Take that same car, with the same MPG rating of 30MPG, but now you have a 20 gallon tank. 20 gallons times 30MPG = 600 miles between stops. 3,000 mile trip only requires 5 stops to fill up.
Yes... very over simplified.

Adam

Adding more RAM to the computer will allow the computer to run more applications at once, and improve efficiency.