Hi Marcin541!
I "hear ya" when you are talking about the speed | memory factor. There was a time when 512 was sufficient for my daughter too. Yet as she progressed into more memory intensive programs we finally ended up sticking in a full 2 gigs of DDR (Corsair Xtreme 'sticks'). That alone nearly tripled the speed of her XP Home system that uses the very same CPU and motherboard as mine (listed below). We HAVE to stay 'on the cutting edge' which is expensive, but it pays for itself so no complaints from us!
I particularly liked your analogy of memory being like a shelf ...may I borrow that analogy for an article I am in the process of writing for testmy.net? (It's going in the Guides section once completed).
Also, you are 100% correct about memory taking the load off your CPU. The more memory you are loaded up with, the fewer CPU cycles that are needed, and hence the faster the system. My present configuration is absolutely the fastest I've ever sat down behind the keyboard of, yet with a CPU with dual-threading that runs at either 1066GHz or 800GHz ....well geesh, that's fast processing when you need it! In System Devices, the processor section actually tells you that you have TWO CPUs, because it detects the dual threading. When you are using programmes that only make use of 1 thread, the Performance Tab in Tash Manager will tell you that you are using 50% of your processor! lol ... So it's easy to see and how and where the "speed kick" comes from with any of the Pentium 4 CPUs ...especially if you are using a programme written to take advantage of HT ...like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or a high-end graphics programme like Maya 6 Unlimited. (That's when the system(s) will really 'shine' with an eye to speed).
The two biggest 'robbers' of system speed is memory and hard drive fragmentation. I grew weary of constantly cruising the network checking everyone for fragmentation, so I bought a multi-user license for Diskeeper 8 Pro. It has a "Set It And Forget It" mode that keeps all the HDDs in this place at nearly 0% "frag' ...so needless to say I love it! The Pro version has the additional feature of ensuring that your System Files/Boot Files remain as close to track zero as possible, which greatly increases overall system speed, and reduces the boot time by an astounding amount! But, Diskeeper is just one of several 'killer' "hands-off" auto-defrag programmes out there. They all work equally well in my humble opinion - - to include the shareware versions as well!
Lastly, every computer in "the house" has XP-Smoker installed. (
www.xp-smoker.com) That programme alone will take the average XP box and REALLY speed matters up! On the same plane of thought, if you visit
www.blackviper.com and study up on System Services, you'll find a ton of great info that will also bring about wonderful speed changes along with "beefed up" system security as well. Out of the 80 'some odd' System Services that most XP machines run by default, most folks only need between 3 - 5 of them. So shutting down the rest really frees up some System Resources! It is well worth the time invested to help tweak your system to 'the max'.
I couldn't help but notice that bamatide found that increasing memory from 256 to 512 made a surfing speed difference ...and if he/she went to 1 gig ...they are now going even faster. heheh.... Everything has a limit yet I haven't found one for memory yet. I could use more than my present 4gigs without a doubt!
Cheers!
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