I almost never have "several" tabs open. It's usually ~15 tabs on my main browser (Chrome), and often more than 30. And also an additional 5 tabs in Firefox, Safari, and several versions of IE.
Right now, web browsers are using over 2GB of memory. This is fairly typical from the web developers that I work with. So perhaps it depends on what your software targets. But I would argue if you're building web apps, then 4GB RAM is by no means excessive.
At my previous job (working on e-commerce sites built on IBM Websphere Commerce) the server setup was so heavy and complicated and client-specific that we did everything in VMs that were passed around on external hard drives. If I was working on one client and needed to look up something for another, I regularly came close to maxing out my full 8 gig of RAM.
That might be true, but I don't develop web apps so I can't argue and I'll respect your opinion. Consequently, I don't understand why posting a relevant, evidential opinion is grounds for negative karma. I'm not complaining-- I genuinely don't get it. I thought that was for violating the guidelines (I concede that if anything this comment is the one the should be treated as such for that reason).
I almost never have "several" tabs open. It's usually ~15 tabs on my main browser (Chrome), and often more than 30. And also an additional 5 tabs in Firefox, Safari, and several versions of IE.
Right now, web browsers are using over 2GB of memory. This is fairly typical from the web developers that I work with. So perhaps it depends on what your software targets. But I would argue if you're building web apps, then 4GB RAM is by no means excessive.