i have 512 MB of RAM.

This is enough to :

-run a fluxbox session + gnome-settings-daemon
-run windows XP inside of vmware
-run galeon, gaim, and a few instances of gnome-terminal

without having a swap partition.


In fact, i've never used more than about 60% of my RAM, no matter what I'm running.


all that to say, 2GB is basically useless unless you're running something like Protools.

2GB isn't useless by any definition of the word. The way Linux (and pretty much every other OS out there) uses RAM for filesystem cache and a whole host of other things makes the old saying "you can never have too much memory" pretty much true.

On 512MB if you've never seen more than ~300MB used you must have your XP VM down to what? 96MB?

see below post: double post

@cs-cam

what if you have a little bit of current running through the RAM chips all the time (even while powered-down)? Then you could use it as storage space... of course, when the power goes out, you're screwed haha