75 Percent of Americans Have No Idea What Computer Memory Is

There are all sorts of polls and focus groups where people are trying to find out what other people think or know, that’s nothing new, and since we’re a technology site here, those are the ones that we focus on. A recent study where 1000 American’s, aged 18 to 65, were polled in their knowledge on computer memory.

I’m pretty sure that pretty much all of our readers know what computer memory is and most of them also know how to upgrade it, so it came a little bit of a shock that nearly 75 percent of the polled people had no idea what computer memory was and half of the asked people thought it was where computer files live.

Now upgrading memory is probably one of the easiest tasks in a computer. Pop the old modules and insert the new, even with a bit of fiddling it’s a job that should be done in about 5 minutes. However, only about 10% of the asked people believed that to be true and 91% thought that it would take at least an hour or more.

“We rely so heavily on our devices to maintain our productivity levels and time management that in times of frustration we often forget that our devices rely on us, too, to stay functional and efficient,” said Crucial.com Marketing Manager Ed Walker. “A memory upgrade is a simple solution. It can be done in less than 5 minutes, costs around $50 (potentially saving hundreds to thousands of dollars on buying a new device) and helps shave off hours of time waiting for a slow computer to load.”

While this study was conducted in the US, I’m pretty sure that the picture can be replicated in almost any country, so no need to bash the Americans for that. The poll also revealed that 91 percent of Americans admit that it can take up to an hour longer to perform tasks on a slower computer, but only 4 percent upgrade their memory when their computer slows down. 49 percent scan for viruses and 26 percent “just deal with it” or put it off for a little while and then return to work.