Help with RAM speeds? and Is dual Channel worth it?

I ran crucial's diagnostic software and it says I only have 2GB of ram on my laptop. It says I can have up to 8GB of ram and that I have 1 free slot. So I will buy like another 2GB stick or maybe 4GB stick.

However it also says that the laptop supports dual channel memory. Do I really need to bother with that and buy a pair? It says that each memory slot can hold DDR3 PC3-8500, DDR3 PC3-10600 with a maximum of 4GB per slot.

However it also doesn't say if my current ram is 8500 or 10600... I'm guessing 10600 is faster. Is that correct?

I'm worried about mixing and matching the wrong ram.

your ram will work at the speed of the slowest ram you have - if you have 8500, ALL your ram will run as 8500 (you can check ram speed with WMIC - in a command prompt wmic MEMORYCHIP get speed will give you the speed.)

Dual channel memory gives a slight boost with matched ram, BUT more ram is generally better than matched ram - 4gb of matched ram works better than 4gb of non matched ram, but not better than say, 6 gb of unmatched ram you can either change both your sticks of ram (to 8gb) with a kit (which sometimes is cheaper than buying the two sticks seperatedly) or add a stick of ram (to up to 6 gb). Just remember to get SODIMM ram, or whatever your laptop uses.