If you are visiting Paris, you must know about rue Montgallet. This is the nice little geek secret here. A street (and a couple of neighbouring ones) where you will find literally one computer shop every other door step. Prices are as low as they can get in France.

I usually start from the top (Metro station Montgallet), moves down the street collecting prices, possibly continuing in rue de Charenton. Then, having decided about the model-price I want to buy I come back to the metro. This is done very easily because for most products the prices are displayed in lists outside the shops. If it’s not listed, the prices is not worth asking for inside.

This is the first-hand observation I made this week. I wanted to add 2GB of RAM memory to my main PC (going from 2GB to 4GB RAM allows to accelerate all my activities in Photoshop when I open more than 3 or 4 12-mega-pixel images at the same time). So, as the normal Parisian geek I am, I ran to the Paris Mecca of PC computing: Montgallet street.

There, I could buy 2 memory modules in a matched XMS2 set of DDR-2/800 PC6400 (CAS5) from Corsair for a mere 41€ and observe that -if you accept lower performance or less famous brands- prices can go as low as 19€. This is the right time to buy RAM!

However, I should also indicate that DRAMexchange announces a possible small increase of RAM prices during this Summer. Maybe the beginning of a small recovery for a market that has been very favorable to the customer for a long time?

Important notice for those intending to do exactly like me: Under Windows (at least if you do not use the 64-bit version of the OS), installing 4GB of RAM will only provide 3.5GB of really available memory. But at this price, I have no issue with wasting 512MB…