@Magic:

GOOGLE! First entry "search in windows 7 RAM usage",  the "search" is not mentioned here:

Windows 7 drives RAM capacity explosion

quote from that article:
"Windows 7 will drive the average PC RAM capacity to 4GB in the next 18 months. That's the conclusion of researchers at the who are monitoring the ramp-up to Windows 7's launch on October 22. After evaluating data collected from early adopters of the Windows 7 RTM code spread across several hundred IT sites, the xpnet.com team observed that nearly 50 percent sported memory capacities of 4GB or higher, with some reaching as high as 12GB.

The average of all Windows 7 PCs was 3.7GB, which is in stark contrast to Windows XP PCs, where the average RAM capacity (for all versions) hovers at just under 1.7GB. Windows 7 RAM installations also best Vista's average of 2.7GB."

GOOGLE first entry "windows 7 RAM usage": I did not even read that, I quote just from the line on Google: "I was wondering what everybody else was getting in their ram usage for windows 7. Im getting 1.08 RAM in use with nothing running."

And I did only read German articles about the heavy RAM usage, that I don't quote here of course, but there were all in accordance about that, while nevertheless were praising Windows 7 a lot of Vista for usability.

I don't Google for you to prove likewise English language articles about why it only makes sense for users with a quad core processor to change from XP to Windows 7 because it occurs to me that you could have found them already if you informed yourself about  these topics. Of course there is a difference between benchmark tests and your own personal experience. I agree that Windows 7 has some on their plus side: when I installed and worked with it, I was surprised that I did not need to install any drivers for my hardware and music and video files needed no plugins - this is of course very helpful. But if I can't load Poser scenes as big as I did in XP64 with my RAM because Windows 7 uses them more and I can't even switch off some of the services that were not needed in XP it does not make sense to me. And yes, I was also answering to the OP about which OS would be good to him. I strongly advise not to use Windows 7 on a laptop as I did in the past against Vista.

You asked about 'too large': well almost double as much services as in XP...