GoKawiil
Tech News
A new analysis argues that Chrome's reputation for excessive memory use is largely an internet meme rather than a data-backed fact, comparing it to similarly exaggerated claims about Microsoft Edge being slow. The piece acknowledges Chrome does use RAM as needed, but says this has not been a significant practical problem either in 2016 or in 2026.
A blogger running a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon purchased in 2021 reported browser crashes and BTRFS filesystem errors, which memtest86+ testing traced to failing RAM. Because the laptop's memory is soldered directly to the motherboard rather than installed in replaceable DIMM slots, the faulty RAM cannot be swapped out as it could on older machines.
Newegg is selling the ABS Stratos II Ruby prebuilt gaming PC for $2,549.99, a $450 cut from its $2,999.99 price. The system pairs an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU, 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, and a 2TB Gen 4 NVMe SSD.
Counterpoint Research reported that worldwide PC shipments dropped 21 percent year-over-year in Q3 2026, ending a two-year growth streak, with IDC and Omdia issuing similar findings. The firm attributed the slump to rising prices for RAM, SSDs, and chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, which pushed up costs on products ranging from MacBooks to Raspberry Pis. Smartphone shipments also hit a 14-year low in the same quarter.
Counterpoint's Q3 data shows global PC shipments dropped to 57 million units from over 70 million a year earlier, a 21 percent year-over-year decline and a 13.8 percent drop from the prior quarter. The firm forecasts a roughly 27 percent year-over-year decline for Q4 and expects weak conditions to persist into 2027. Lenovo remains the top vendor despite a 23 percent decline, HP fell 31 percent, Dell dropped 25 percent, while Apple slipped only 11 percent, gaining relative market share.
Newegg is offering a combo deal pairing AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU with 32GB of DDR5 memory and a Gigabyte X870E motherboard for $1,029.99, a savings of $238.99 compared to buying the parts separately. The bundle also throws in a free Cooler Master 240mm AIO liquid cooler and a copy of the game Onimusha: Way of the Sword, together valued at nearly $150.
Amazon has dropped the price of its Fire HD 10 tablet to $72.99, a cut of $82 from its usual price and the lowest it has sold for. The tablet features a 10.1-inch Full HD display, 4GB of RAM, and a battery rated for up to 13 hours of use.
Dell's XPS 13 and Apple's entry-level MacBook still ship with 8GB of RAM, but prices have risen sharply this year—Dell's base configuration climbed $100 and Apple's MacBook went from $599 to $699 amid broader June price hikes. TrendForce reports that memory, storage and CPUs now account for 68 percent of a mainstream laptop's bill of materials.
The Free Software Foundation's deputy director Sean O'Brien published a statement criticizing Raspberry Pi's bootloader firmware, which since 2024 has included checks that can prevent the board from recognizing or booting with replacement RAM soldered on by users, even when the new memory is electrically compatible and of equal capacity. O'Brien argues this goes beyond the organization's existing objection to Raspberry Pi's nonfree firmware, calling the RAM-detection mechanism a form of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).
A how-to guide explains that spikes in CPU, RAM, or disk use from background processes aren't always a problem—sometimes they reflect legitimate activity like a launcher downloading updates. It recommends closing apps properly through their own quit options or the system tray before resorting to Task Manager's End Task, and suggests using Microsoft Defender's offline scan for persistent or suspicious processes.
Microsoft is reworking parts of Windows 11 to reduce how much memory and processing power the operating system consumes, specifically targeting lower-end machines with 8GB of RAM. The changes aim to make the OS run more efficiently on hardware that has struggled under Windows 11's current resource demands.
Google has introduced Googlebook, a new AI-focused laptop platform built on its Chromebook lineage, with a 16GB RAM requirement and starting prices of $999 (except for a limited-time $899 Acer offer). Models from Lenovo and Asus reach pricing comparable to the MacBook Air, and the platform's phone-pairing feature requires a device running Android 17, an OS released only four months ago on a small number of high-end phones.