I was at a trade show recently and they were showing some new motherboards. Space for two quad processors and 8X RAM sockets for EACH processor!!! WOW... I was slobbering on the glass display case.

It is amazing - if you can believe the gadget that shows memory usage on the Vista  sidebar - how much memory Vista hogs, even when it has just booted and is sitting idle! And if you look in Services and Processes, you can see how much stuff is running "automatically" - you gotta wonder just how much of this stuff is really necessary??? Even now, just sitting on the net and typing this, my system is using 963MB of memory!

When I upgraded to 4GB RAM, BIOS correctly reported I had 4096MB... When I booted Vista, it reports "3581MB". At first I thought I'd lost some memory but found a MS article about how Vista won't report the full memory installed over 2GB. 

In a nutshell (the article is entitled "The system memory that is reported in the System Information dialog box in Windows Vista is less than you expect if 4 GB of RAM is installed" - what a mouthfull!!!): "The reduction in available system memory depends on the devices that are installed in the computer. However, to avoid potential driver compatibility issues, the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista limit the total available memory to 3.12 GB." 

So, apparently "the maximum memory available in 32-bit versions of Windows Vista is typically 3.12 GB."

I feel ripped off!!! But, I have 3581MB, so maybe I am actually doing okay???