Well, the most common type of memory that you'll plug into a motherboard (with the exception of one with an i820 chipset, which we're going to ignore because we already decided that it was not a viable choice) is SDRAM. SDRAM comes in 3 speeds: PC66 for 66MHz buses, PC100 for 100MHz buses and PC133 for, well, you get the point. I haven't seen PC66 memory being sold for some time now, so we're going to ignore it. All these different memory speeds basically just means that they are designed to run at a maximum of the rated speed, not the "only" speed that it'll run at, like some of you might have thought before. So, that means that if you buy PC133 SDRAM, it will run on a system using a Celeron processor that uses a 66MHz bus. The only 2 things that you might want to look for in memory are the speed (so if you have a Pentium III EB, you need PC133 memory, or if you have a Pentium III E, you can use either PC100 or PC133 memory) and brand. The brand usually doesn't make much of a difference, and I usually just ignore it because "generic" memory has never given me problems before. But if you feel that you want to avoid ANY problems in the future, consider spending the extra dough on the branded memory (like I said before, I never actually had to use branded memory, so I wouldn't know which brand is better than which). Check in the memory section of our network articles to find reviews on memory.

For the amount of memory, at least 128MB is the bare minimum for these days, but you could never have enough of memory (well, at least not until we hit gigabytes of memory, but even then, you can never have enough if you're doing certain tasks that demands a lot of memory). Also, instead of getting multiple sticks of memory, tru to just get 1 stick and be done with, even if it is a little bit more expensive. This will leave more room for future memory upgrades. Remember, you can never have enough of memory, but you can only have a certain amount of memory slots!

On to: Part II