[MV] How much RAM?

[Erica Mackenzie]

On Friday, Jun 20, 2003, at 19:18 Australia/Sydney, David Tompkins 
wrote:

> 	I have just installed ViaVoice on my PowerBook G4 Titanium. I have 
> 512 Mb of RAM.  I am aware that ViaVoice says that it only needs 256 
> Mb, but am skeptical of this.
>
> 	Would ViaVoice perform better if I upped the RAM to say 1.024 Gb?  I 
> want to achieve the best possible results, and would increase the RAM 
> if it means that ViaVoice will achieve a better level of word 
> recognition.

ViaVoice gobbles up RAM. I have never encountered an app with anywhere 
near such an appetite for memory. I too have a PowerBook G4 Titanium 
with 512 Mb of RAM, and it is paging out to disc within half an hour of 
firing up VV, even if I am not dictating. The Voice Centre must be put 
to sleep every second that you are not actually using it or it eats up 
nearly a Mb a minute, just by being on and awake, according to IBM tech 
support; it can't just be left on like iListen.

I would say, the more RAM, the better, but I sometimes wonder if it's 
possible to satisfy VV's appetite for memory. iListen from MacSpeech, 
on the other hand, is very economical with system resources, including 
memory. It might be cheaper to buy iListen than try to satisfy VV in 
the RAM  department <g>, especially given the uncertain future of VV 
(see the recent thread, "ViaVoice vs. iListen"). VV doesn't even work 
properly any more on my system (10.2.6) - SpeechPad crashes, loses 
saved data, Manage my Vocabulary doesn't work most of the time, etc. 
IBM have not updated it in over a year, apart from a patch for Jaguar 
which didn't work. Dog knows what depths of misbehaviour it will sink 
to on 10.3...<g>