Running out of RAM: Any fixes?

My laptop keeps throwing those "low memory" warnings at me lately. Could that be why my downloads are painfully slow or even just crash after about 15 or 20 minutes?
Also, I was wondering if I could plug my phone into the laptop via USB and run the download through the phone, but have the file save directly to an external hard drive connected to the laptop
The thing is, my phone's only got maybe 800 MB of space left over.

I'm a bit lost here—are we talking about running out of RAM, or is the hard drive just hitting its limit?
What kind of OS are you running on that laptop (Windows 7, 8, 10, or 11?), and have you tried clearing out all the junk files to free up some space on the drive?

It’s likely just poorly phrased... you simply don't have enough headspace on the laptop's hard drive. It’s a fairly common headache these days.
One could theoretically tether via a mobile hotspot, assuming you have an unlimited data plan so you don't end up staring at an astronomical bill from Verizon.

A few years back, I offered to help a buddy of mine copy a movie or something over from a thumb drive, and he tells me straight up, "I can't, there's no room left on my computer." Turns out, the guy was trying to drag everything directly onto his desktop, which was already absolutely buried under icons. When he said he had "no space," what he actually meant was he didn't have any more physical room on his screen to drop a new icon. You really have to look closer at what someone actually means when they claim they're dealing with "low memory."

He hasn't checked in yet. Maybe he's busy clearing out some dust... though honestly, he could've just emptied the Recycle bin to free up some space. For anything deeper than that, I bet he's gonna need an extra set of hands...