Hi,ive bought a laptop for my son for Xmas,Toshiba 4gb ram and 500GB sata hard drive,I'm really confused by this,I understand the 4gb bit (I think) but not a clue on the sata bit,he will be using it for runescape,downloading games,films and music,is the laptop big enough to do all this or do I NEED to buy an external hard drive,any advice will be gratefully received 4gb is the AMOUNT of RAM, this is separate from the hard drive which can hold 500gb.  It's the hard drive that stores his files, the RAM is the short term memory that the computer uses to store running applications, the more of that you have, the more you can have OPEN at once without it starting to slow down.

4gb of RAM is fairly standard for a laptop nowdays so should be plenty for his needs.

A 500gb hard drive is also a decent SIZE, certainly enough to get him started.  You can always buy him an external hard drive down the line if he starts running low on space.If he thinks it is too much.... I will take some.  Quote

he will be using it for runescape,downloading games,films and music