ugh, can you tell i got a new keyboard? iii eennnd upp tyypinng likkke thiiss. stupid new things. i had thhis old IBM click keyboard for the last 15 years or so (was still serial, lol). rio keeps complaining that it is so loud that my 'clackiness' keeps her awake at night, so i bought a new one with squishy, quiet keys - looks like a flat laptop keyboard. its annoying aas hell, im seconds away from repeatedly sslaaming iit against the wall. sso to clarify the above, i think when you have <768 megs of RAM having a bigger pagefile helps, since some apps need more 'rooom' to work with. but with >1.5-2 gigs of RAM windows acts kindof retarded, as it keeps trying to use the pagefile even though you have plenty of RAM free, and thus it slows down your system. there are plenty of threads and articles you can google that are written by some people who are way more intelligent and experienced than me.. im just saying what worked for myself. optimal pagefile settings have always been a matter of debate. keep in mind that older articles were written by/for people who generally had 256-512 megs of RAM, and in my experience the opposite holds true for thhose with more - especially 4 gigs. geezz, ya lucky bastard, im jealous :) how much did that set you back? most DDR boards only have 4 slots, and 1 gig sticks of DDR are like 6-7x as expensive as 512 meg ones.