seems like this thread is missing a little important factor. a few post up the guy who said he went to 1gb and could do like 5 things at once with more ram. this is true so what *regular* users ( i know most of us are prob not ) need to think about (after 256mb's) is how much multitasking are they gonna really be doing. I mean how often do you burn, encode mp3's and play a game at the same time? seriously most people don't ( I admit it is cool though) but to justify an $$ for the few times you want to impress your friends is what you may want to consider before spending the $$, I also read somewhere(tom's hardware?) that 256 was the "sweet spot" for win 2k, this being a generalization of "normal" set up and usage. I personally run 256 pc2100's in a couple boxes both win2k pro and XP pro. It runs fine but wiht prices getting low I can see the jump to 512 being worth it cause I do push my machines a bit