Upon advice given me by some Dopers in a thread I started, as well as searching on my own, I decided to order some more RAM for my computer. It’s supposed to arrive in a couple of days. The website that I ordered the RAM from says to be sure to have the latest BIOS update on your computer before installing the RAM. There’s only been one BIOS update for my computer and I haven’t done it yet, since I did some more searching here for “BIOS” and based on that, I’m not sure whether I should update or not. There doesn’t seem to be anything in either my computer owner’s manual or the manufacturer’s website (I have a Dell) about updating the BIOS before the RAM, though it does have handy instructions on how to put the RAM in yourself in the owner’s manual.
Updating the BIOS seems a bit tricky and I am not exactly a computer expert. I am, however, a person wary of messing up her computer. Do I really need to update the BIOS first or is it more of a suggestion?
It’s a suggestion. The only time you need to update your BIOS is if you’re having technical difficulties and an update exists which fixes your specific problem. It’s not like hardware drivers where (usually) latest is best.
RAM is generally pure plug-and-play. As long as your motherboard can handle the amount and type of RAM you want to put in (and that should be covered in your owner’s manual or in the tech specs on the company website), you should just need to open your computer, pop the sticks in (following the directions so you pop them in the right way, of course 
), close it up, and turn it on.
Ah, thanks. I’ve been having no problems which aren’t explainable, I think, by the presence of way more crap on my computer than I actually need, like shareware games I tried, decided I didn’t want to buy, and never deleted till now.
With manual in hand, I already took a look in the memory module slot to see what what I already had in there looked like. The memory module was much smaller than I had thought.
I haven’t tried adding anything to my newest box running XP, but thinking back to the previous box with 98 SE, when I added RAM, upon startup, BIOS detected a change in the amount of RAM and wanted to do a recount, update of CMOS and close. So long as you bought the right kind of RAM and are within the specs of the MOBO, you shouldn’t get AFU.
I’d better stop before reaching acronym overload. 
Maybe. When I upgraded my (very recent) PC from 2GB to 4GB, the BIOS didn’t see the last GIG (and therefore XP Pro and Vista didn’t, either), until I upgraded it. But I agree with everyone else: try it first, and only upgrade the BIOS if the RAM upgrade doesn’t work without upgrading it.