256mb is plenty for XP. Just maybe not for the programs that you want to run in it. If you havent done one recently, then I'd first do a defrag and clean out the registry. If your computers still running slow, and using the page file all the time then get some more RAM. 512mb should be plenty as long as you dont play new games or use demanding graphics software.
All the buzzt!
CornedBee
"There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
- Flon's Law
I agree. XP itself could probably be run with just 64mb of RAM if you wanted to, but just sitting here @ cboard, firefox uses 95mb memory, and Open Office uses 58mb, that's quite alot if you only have 256mb total. Either get more memory or do a complete system upgrade imo..
How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.
I do not know the right answer - but it is what we have.
On my notebook right now the used memory size is 249M, total Physical memory - 256M and free physical memory 90M - so it means that about 83M are in swap...
(and due to the physical memory size I prefer to run on this comp only Remote Desktop - so all programs I need are running on the main comp. The result is better than I try to start the simple IceBookReader directly on my comp for example (And I do not talk about some VC++ application or Photoshop)
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection,
except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
– David J. Wheeler
Elysia: a total of 512 (if 256 has been enough so far) will be plenty until the OP is ready to move up to a new system. It would be wasteful to buy more than that especially since the cost of DDR1 is still high.
Here's what task manager says for my system. I currently have 392 MB of RAM (3x128 MB of PC-133), which is less than i would like to. I though about replacing one of those memory module for a 512 MB one but hey, i'm cheap, and can't find one for less than 10$. Note that my computer is 8 years old .
Anyway. Here's the number. It says "122 MB of available memory, 178 MB swapped on the HD" (if i understand well), and there's really nothing much running on background. So i would say, 512 MB would be great, but 768 MB would be greater, etc.
No, the pagefile in task manager isn't what's in the pagefile on your disk, but how much memory is used in the entire system, RAM and on disk.
--
Mats
Compilers can produce warnings - make the compiler programmers happy: Use them!
Please don't PM me for help - and no, I don't do help over instant messengers.
All the buzzt!
CornedBee
"There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
- Flon's Law
Pretty much, stuff that is the oldest and most unused in memory gets swapped out, allowing you to keep launching more and more applications, but you take a huge hit on load time when you click on a completely paged program that takes up more than the memory left. Since it has to page something then unpage as much of the once completely paged program.
I want one of those so bad, but the price keeps me out of that market =(
Yeah, unfortunately, Windows is a complex beast and I certainly don't understand fully how it works.
However, I'm assuming that with such little memory footprint, Windows actually wants to keep some RAM free so applications that demands more memory can actually receive it directly instead of having to page out something to make room before granting the request.
Instead Windows might page out most unused pages to disk so as to keep some free. Makes sense, since it optimizes the speed of active applications.