if stu is thinking of handing his 65nm quad down so he can keep the 45nm for himself, he has the RAM he needs in his existing dell. if he wants to step down to a dual core that is his business. i'm talking about what is best for stu, not his wife's parents. the cheapest/best thing to do would be to get the quad with 2GB of ram, put the existing 4GB into the 45nm system and put the new 2GB kit into the 65nm system and give it away. It's a faster, lower-power sidegrade for him with a free upgrade to Win7 and a huge boon of longevity for the in-laws.
The only "stated purposes" stu lists are tasks that either system will handle admirably. if sonny weren't trolling, he would've responded with words rather than an emote or sarcastic one-liner and he would've properly quoted my post. instead, he implies that more is always better when it comes to RAM and that the difference between duals and quads are negligible in this case. completely unprovoked, he puts up a straw man named alyarb who advocates a yorkfield system w/ 640K. i'm at a loss as to how his thoughtlessness is my fault, and i've said it many times now: switch to the yorkfield and keep your 4GB. lower power and higher IPC than the kentsfield plus a free win7 upgrade.