What do ram chips do for a computer?

what do ram chips do for a computer and what would the advantage be to upgrade to more ram for a lap top,and what are the usall off the shelf price of the chips be

RAM (Random Access Memory) is where your computer stores all its working information - a scratch-pad of sorts. When your computer runs out of space in RAM, it has to store parts of it to disk, which is much, much slower (think getting something out of the fridge compared to going down to the corner store slow). Upgrading your RAM is often one of the cheapest ways you can improve a computer's performance, especially for a laptop (where your upgrade options are more limited).

As for how much it costs - that depends where you live. Shop around!

information is permenently stored in the hard disk...but its slow for the computer to access...

so the computer transfers frequently used data to the ram for easy and fast access...
fir example when you are running windows XP,the essential files of windows XP is transferred to the ram...same in the case of all other applications...

when ram is not enough the computer uses the page file,which is just the memory in the hard disk..