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Remember not everyone can afford the latest beast of a machine that can accommodate 16GB RAM, some people still have laptops that can hold a maximum of 4GB by design limitation; it's more likely to be those people worrying about Chrome's RAM usage.

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And RAM uses power, whether it's being used or not. Having more RAM means shorter battery life.

I suspect the power penalty of RAM is made up for by the fact that you don't have to hit the hard disk to get that data back (firing up the HDD will suck a lot of juice). It also appears the needs are pretty much tied to the chip, so a 4GB and 8GB module use about the same amount of power.

http://superuser.com/questions/40113/does-installing-larger-...

I have 16 GB in my ThinkPad (x230) and it still lasts 10 hours, so that's really negligible.

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