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  3. How much RAM you have?

How much RAM you have?

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  • J Judah Gabriel Himango

    So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

    Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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    Chris Austin
    wrote on last edited by
    #40

    I have 12 GB on both of my workstations. But, I run VMs for functional and deployment testing. When I moved to this set up I went from having roughly 4 to 6 systems running at a time to 2 to 3. The third machine comes in when it's time for final deployment testing. VMs are great but sometimes you will run into a snag if you don't test on a real environment.

    Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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    • L Lost User

      4GB, for XP x64. I bought it over a year ago, I thought I'd have to upgrade by this time.. but I don't. 4GB is still enormous overkill. I almost never need more than 2GB. But Vista is different, even with 12GB it probably still wastes it all. I've heard weven is better in this regard.

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      Stuart Dootson
      wrote on last edited by
      #41

      harold aptroot wrote:

      But Vista is different, even with 12GB it probably still wastes it all. I've heard weven is better in this regard.

      My weven VMs (one on XP, one on OS X) run Visual Studio happily with 1.5GB - guess that's better than Vista?

      Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p

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      • D Dalek Dave

        This is getting a bit Macho isn't it! :) I can smell the testosterone in the air here... "Yeah well, 8's ok, but really 16 is needed if you want to make real headway!" Why would you need 16 at the moment? Could you fill it?

        ------------------------------------ "Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers. I despair for the future." Socrates 400BC

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        Chris Austin
        wrote on last edited by
        #42

        Virtualization. You can seriously cut down the number of physical machines you need with good fast hard drives and oodles of ram.

        Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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        • J Jim Crafton

          leppie wrote:

          Just imagine how snappy everything will be when Windows does not need to ever go to the swap file!

          That raises an interesting question I've been thinking about for a while. Given the amount of RAM that a lot of people have, what would happen if you just set the Swap file size to 0? Does Windows run faster? Will it even let you do this?

          ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh

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          Lost User
          wrote on last edited by
          #43

          I found that it makes task switching much faster, and in general doesn't give any problems. After 1 and a half year I have not had a single problem with not having a swap file.

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          • L leppie

            Jim Crafton wrote:

            what would happen if you just set the Swap file size to 0? Does Windows run faster? Will it even let you do this?

            I will let you, but it gives a warning that it should be at least the size of the RAM. This will only be used in case of BSOD for a full memory dump. If you can live with the mini dump (that is 64kb I think), you can probably get away with a 1mb, not sure if it will take 0.

            xacc.ide
            IronScheme - 1.0 beta 3 - out now!
            ((lambda (x) `((lambda (x) ,x) ',x)) '`((lambda (x) ,x) ',x))

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            Lost User
            wrote on last edited by
            #44

            If you set it to "small but not zero" you occasionally get warnings that it has too little swap space.

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            • D Dan Neely

              DavidCrow wrote:

              Judah Himango wrote: Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? Can Vista even use that much? See here.

              The better x64 versions can. Basic does 8gb; Premium 16gb; Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate all support 128gb. Server08 can support upto 2TB of ram. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Vista-Maximum-Supported-RAM-44487.shtml[^] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/cc196364.aspx[^]

              It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

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              Judah Gabriel Himango
              wrote on last edited by
              #45

              I'm running ultimate, so 128 GB here I come! (I wish! :))

              Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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              • L Lost User

                The cache vs free thing is actually unrelated (naming failure is all it is, "free" should include "cached") I was referring to all the Vista bloat that makes it use 1GB ("total" minus ("free"+"cached")) of RAM to show a desktop, versus 200MB-ish for XP. edit: by the way, I run XP without swap. Much faster.

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                Judah Gabriel Himango
                wrote on last edited by
                #46

                Alright, that's true. But it wouldn't eat 12 GBs. :-) (It runs like a charm on 4GB!)

                Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                  So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                  Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                  Philipp Sumi
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #47

                  4GB on the server, 4 GB on the laptop, 8GB on the workstation. I've had to be prepared for the moment where I needed to run a few VMs while playing Duke Nukem Forever. Well, until yesterday, that is...

                  NetDrives - Open Source Network Share Management

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                  • C Chris Austin

                    Virtualization. You can seriously cut down the number of physical machines you need with good fast hard drives and oodles of ram.

                    Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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                    Dan Neely
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #48

                    Only if your physical machines are all under light CPU loads. Virtualizing boxes running DC apps is a largely futile exercise.

                    It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

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                    • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                      So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                      Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                      E Offline
                      Ed Poore
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #49

                      Judah Himango wrote:

                      Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                      6GB went from 2GB up to 6GB and noticed a fast improvement, however I don't think that I've maxed it out yet but then I only tend to have one or two copies of VS open at one time. [edit]And sometimes 4 or 5 VMs[/edit]


                      I doubt it. If it isn't intuitive then we need to fix it. - Chris Maunder

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                      • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                        So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                        Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

                        J Offline
                        J Offline
                        John M Drescher
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #50

                        I have 6GB of memory on the home desktop (running 64 bit gentoo linux). This is all I need except most of the time however it would speed up things when I transcode a 4hr analog show if I either had more ram or a had a SSD. It's 6GB instead of 8GB because I got the 2.83 GHz Core2 quad + Q9550 CPU + motherboard (ASUS P5QPRO) and 2GB memory in a bundle for under $300 with the help of microsoft live.com on Black Friday. I added another 4GB of memory and a ANTEC 650W 80+ powersupply for less than $100 for both which brought the total to around $400 US for the whole upgrade.

                        John

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                        • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                          So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                          Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

                          J Offline
                          J Offline
                          Jorgen Sigvardsson
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #51

                          The more, the better. I just upgraded my home machine from 2 to 8 gigs. Turned out that 2 gigs is enough for Visual Studio 2008/C#, but near enough for that and SQL Server 2008. After the upgrade, everything is running very smoothly. I have 8 gigs in my work station. It's a quad core something, including a mirrored raid drive. I have C: for system components only, D: (mirrored raid) for compilation only. It's oversized (700 gigs), so that it won't fragment itself into fubarishness, and E: for apps. It's so crazy fast, it's just silly. Honestly, for the first time, I think I will be able to handle the next version of Visual Studio without having to upgrade.

                          -- Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit

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                          • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                            So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                            Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                            L Offline
                            Luke Lovegrove
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #52

                            Judah Himango wrote:

                            Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill?

                            Of course, since "640K of RAM ought to be enough for anyone" (I've never confirmed though if that was really said). However, I just got a machine with 12GB DDR3 RAM in it, and it runs real nice. Vista and the Win7 RC don't even think about anything, they just do. Makes my work laptop with a "measly" 4GB of RAM feel pretty slow now! The motherboard on the new system can take up to 24GB of RAM, so it's going to get an upgrade when I can get my hands on 6 of those 4GB sticks. The main reason behind wanting so much RAM is for virtualization and some of the newer Microsoft operating systems... SBS 2008 runs through the Windows install just fine, but once the SBS component installation is started, you're screwed unless you have at least 4GB of RAM in the system as it halts the installation at that point. So if you want/need to play with Small Business or Essentials Business Server 2008 without having to buy 2 or 4 computers, virtualization is the next best thing, and you're going to need the RAM for virutal machines, let alone the host operating system.

                            ------------------------ Luke Lovegrove ------------------------

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                            • L Luke Lovegrove

                              Judah Himango wrote:

                              Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill?

                              Of course, since "640K of RAM ought to be enough for anyone" (I've never confirmed though if that was really said). However, I just got a machine with 12GB DDR3 RAM in it, and it runs real nice. Vista and the Win7 RC don't even think about anything, they just do. Makes my work laptop with a "measly" 4GB of RAM feel pretty slow now! The motherboard on the new system can take up to 24GB of RAM, so it's going to get an upgrade when I can get my hands on 6 of those 4GB sticks. The main reason behind wanting so much RAM is for virtualization and some of the newer Microsoft operating systems... SBS 2008 runs through the Windows install just fine, but once the SBS component installation is started, you're screwed unless you have at least 4GB of RAM in the system as it halts the installation at that point. So if you want/need to play with Small Business or Essentials Business Server 2008 without having to buy 2 or 4 computers, virtualization is the next best thing, and you're going to need the RAM for virutal machines, let alone the host operating system.

                              ------------------------ Luke Lovegrove ------------------------

                              J Offline
                              J Offline
                              Judah Gabriel Himango
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #53

                              Luke Lovegrove wrote:

                              (I've never confirmed though if that was really said).

                              It's a well known hoax, Gates didn't really say that.

                              Luke Lovegrove wrote:

                              However, I just got a machine with 12GB DDR3 RAM in it, and it runs real nice. Vista and the Win7 RC don't even think about anything, they just do. Makes my work laptop with a "measly" 4GB of RAM feel pretty slow now!

                              I'm green with geek envy! And for only $150 I can get upgrade to 12GB (given I have 4GB now). That's not a bad deal. I just might do it.

                              Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                              • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                Luke Lovegrove wrote:

                                (I've never confirmed though if that was really said).

                                It's a well known hoax, Gates didn't really say that.

                                Luke Lovegrove wrote:

                                However, I just got a machine with 12GB DDR3 RAM in it, and it runs real nice. Vista and the Win7 RC don't even think about anything, they just do. Makes my work laptop with a "measly" 4GB of RAM feel pretty slow now!

                                I'm green with geek envy! And for only $150 I can get upgrade to 12GB (given I have 4GB now). That's not a bad deal. I just might do it.

                                Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

                                L Offline
                                L Offline
                                Luke Lovegrove
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #54

                                Judah Himango wrote:

                                It's a well known hoax, Gates didn't really say that.

                                At least now I know it's a hoax! I'd say upgrade if you can afford it though, should be worth every dollar!

                                ------------------------ Luke Lovegrove ------------------------

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                                • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                  So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                                  Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                                  R Offline
                                  raicuandi
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #55

                                  2GB on Vista, no problems, no slowdowns since I have this machine.

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                                  • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                    So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                                    Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                                    ghle
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #56

                                    640 K on my DOS/Linux machine. 1 MB on my wife's Win 3.1/OS2 box :)

                                    Gary

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                                    • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                      So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                                      Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                                      T Offline
                                      Tatworth
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #57

                                      I have 4 Gb of RAM for 32-bit box. Next machine for me will be a 64-bit with at least 8Gb of RAM. As you afford to upgrade, should you upgrade? To 8Gb definitely! Please check your motherboard specifications to check if it can go to 12 Gb. Also there may be an O/A limit as I recall that Home Vista is limited to 8Gb, whereas Pro Vista will go to 16Gb.

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                                      • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                        So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                                        Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                                        C Offline
                                        Chaitanya Joshi
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #58

                                        I've got 4 Gigs of RAM in my VAIO Z 13. To support to 2.53 C2D processor and NVIDIA 9300 GPU it takes that much...

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                                        • J Judah Gabriel Himango

                                          So I posted on CP last week about my Vista machine blue screening. It came down to a memory error. Someone suggested blowing the dust out of the RAM slots and swapping the 2 sticks. Good news: it seemed to work! I've been running for 2 days now without any blue screens, and the memory error detection tool in Vista can't find any errors. Wahooo! But it got me thinking: I'm running x64 with 4GB of RAM (2 sticks of 2GB each). I've got 6 slots for RAM, so I could theoretically load it up with 12 GB if I bought the cheap 2GB sticks. Is 12 gigs of RAM overkill? How much RAM do you guys have for your dev machines at home?

                                          Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango

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                                          F Offline
                                          Falcon_007
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #59

                                          6GB so far and another 6GB coming this next week :-D , and with this build (i7 920 @ 3.2, 6GB 10666, Asus Gene II (capable of 24GB)) its the first time i actually like vista, before this i tried vista x86 (pre-SP1) with 3Gbs, and i freaking hated it so much i switched back to XP... the only thing i quite don't get is that the RAM being "used" is around 50% without any open program, that's obviously 3GB in apparently nothing... and i still wonder where the hell goes so much ram... but as the saying says, "when in doubt blame norton" so i blame thee norton (eventhou i dont have any norton product installed ;P )

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