If you have 256 or yes, probably noticebly. If you have 512 already, the effect will be minor.

Just installed XP Home on my girlfriend's ancient computer (PII-400 384mb ram) and it boots up in less then a minute. She is very happy [img]smile.gif[/img]

Well it will greatly increase performance in everything. ;) about how great a performance increase for the windows XP itself, I do not know, but if you have other applications like games and other software you will feel the difference because they all fight for physical memory (RAM)

Thanks to everyone for all their help. It's greatly appreciated.

I have one final question though (I promise ;) ): how should I go about totally cleaning up the hard drive? I'd like to get it back to pretty much how it was from the factory (just barebones Windows XP Home). I don't have the Windows discs though, so I can't do a re-install.

Should I just go around deleting programs, documents, cookies, caches and whatever? Or is there another way to really clean things up? Thanks very much again.

Hardware tests were made about what happens if you add RAM.

From 128Mb to 256Mb --> approx 50% more speed
From 256Mb to 512Mb --> 5-6%
512Mb to 1024Mb --> 2%

Depends of the setup and what you´re using it for, but the test was very diverse.

I upgraded from 256Mb to 512Mb and didn´t really notice improvement. :(

Jees i thought it was a bit more than that! What about 1024 to 2056? 1%? or does it start to go up again?

What was the hardware test? I ask since this kind of benchmark is going to be effect greatly by number of programs loaded and how much multi-tasking you are doing.

For example, if you try and run VMWare with less then a Gig forget it. VMWare is a product that allows you to build virtual computers within your own. It's great for testing networking, new OS's, etc...

What was the hardware test? I ask since this kind of benchmark is going to be effect greatly by number of programs loaded and how much multi-tasking you are doing.

For example, if you try and run VMWare with less then a Gig forget it. VMWare is a product that allows you to build virtual computers within your own. It's great for testing networking, new OS's, etc... </font>[/QUOTE]Yea there are certainly programs like that, and almost any heavy graphic program will get a 256mb, or a 512mb pc down. I cannot find the url right now, but it seemed professional. [img]smile.gif[/img] Like any hardware test. If you have a home pc for playing and surfing in a light use which also runs ok, then there´s no point to upgrade.

You can find some of the tests by searching from Google, then you guys can prove me wrong.

WIN XP pro runs fine for me with hardly any lag on my Pentium II 266 with 192 meg of ram, and if you ctrl-alt-del a few things (including explorer) i can still run a few modern games with almost no problems although graphically intensive games don't work well it's still a good computer.
Kind of ironic really our good computer is still running win 98.

<span style="color: lightblue">Where "graphically intense" means "better than DOS graphics", Luke? ;) [img]tongue.gif[/img]