I've bought computers using Win 95, 98 and XP, each equipped with the minimum memory suggested by Microsoft. I added memory to each with little apparent difference in performance.

I recently bought a computer with Vista Home Basic and 512MB of memory. The performance sucked. Turned off the fancy graphics, background processes, etc, without benefit. Upgraded to 2GB and the difference is amazing. What most surprised me is that system startup and shutdown are each about 10 times faster. (No exaggeration, shutdown used to take minutes, it now takes seconds).

I don't have a question unless someone cares to comment on the difference between Vista and the older versions. Is Microsoft understating the minimum needed for Vista? After all, Bill Gates once said no one needs more than 640K of memory.