Jeff Atwood, perhaps the most widely read programming blogger, has a post that makes a case against using ECC memory. My read is that his major points are: Google didn't use ECC when they built their servers in 1999 Most RAM errors are hard errors and not soft errors RAM errors are rare because hardware has improved If ECC were actually important, it would be used everywhere and not just servers. Paying for optional stuff like this is "awfully enterprisey" Let's take a look at these arguments...