<< 2. More ram makes bigger diff? I THINK NOT!!! Performance is not the factor of more memory, it is about FASTER RAM. That is why we go with DDR and RDRAM and higher cache ratings. Most winblows only need 128Meg anyway!!! There will not be a different between 128Meg of ram and 1Gig of ram. UNLESS YOU WORKING WITH EXTREME GRAPHICS!!! Even then you will probably only need max 384Meg, No need for 1GIGZ...
a) WINDOWS will still crash even if it have all the ram in the WORLD!!!! And Yes, this includes all windows, EVEN NT that claims to have better memory management. You will need to reboot it after 2-3 week in winNT/2K/XP. You probably wont survive pass 1 week of intensive multitasking with Win9x.
b) And if you use linux? Why do u need so much ram? For the console? hell no... >>
Sounds like someone has RAM envy jk.
I personally use 512 MB of RAM cuz my comp doubles as a fileserver for the house, NAT for the home network, my photoshop machine, and my desktop burner for transfers from my laptop. As far as windows using memory, Windows+apps can use a lot of memory. Even with periodic cleaning of the RAM, the comp still has to make a swap file every once in a while but I've run this box stable and nonstop for a while without any problems since I added the ram, but I used to only have 256MB.