I see a lot of confusion between 'hard drive' and 'ram'.

This is probably because they are both use bytes as size units.

Beyond this they are radically different and their impact on your computer speed and capacity are radically different.

So here is a simple explanation for those that may be confused.

RAM (short for random access memory) is volatile solid state memory. It is used for short term storage, and looses its contents when you computer is powered down.

More RAM means :-

1. more effective computer speed (capacity)
2. better multi-tasking capability
3. less waiting for things to happen

Hard drive is magnetic disk storage. Hard drives do not forget when the power is turned off.

More hard drive means :-

1. more programs can be loaded
2. more data can be saved

Remember I can upgrade your RAM or you hard drive. The good news is that these components are both relatively cheap these days. Quite often, just increasing the RAM on your computer, will give a cheap boost to performance.