I've just bought some more RAM for my laptop, a 2GB upgrade to be precise. Now, before I get into the ramifications (no pun intended), here's some context. I'm of the generation that recalls trying to fit software into the smallest possible of orifices, and while I never really got on with assembler myself, I could understand the elegance of a well-put-together piece of code. Some of my then-colleagues continue the embedded programming challenge, these days trying to fit large-screen video decoding into the RAM equivalent of a matchbox, and managing to squeeze in a copy of Space Invaders to boot.

And so it is - you know what's coming - that I find myself looking at my laptop screen and wondering exactly how Window Vista could manage to fill an entire gigabyte of memory, almost by itself.

Perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's worthy of a look. Right now, my wonderfully handy sidebar gadget is telling me that my computer is consuming 713MB of memory - which is on a fresh boot with only Notepad running so I can type this - Notepad takes up a megabyte, by the way. The other 712 is used up by processes that I have not invoked personally.

This is all a far cry from "640K ought to be enough for anybody," as Bill Gates is reputed to have said (and later denied, but where's the fun in that). Indeed, that wouldn't even support Notepad! But what exactly is the rest doing? A cursory glance at the task manager (5MB) tells me that, as a user, I am taking up:

- 25MB for Skype ("Take a deep breath," it tells me)
- 20MB for that “wonderfully handy” Windows Sidebar
- 10MB for Windows Explorer
- 8MB for Bluetooth
- 8MB for CSRSS - an RSS service perhaps
- 6MB for MSN Messenger
- 3MB for Samsung battery and display tools
- 3MB for Groove

Together with the nearly 10MB of various bits and bobs, that's 93MB by my reckoning. Meaning that the other 600MB plus, is taken up by non-user processes. I could strip out about 30MB for the AVG antivirus and shield I'm currently running, there’s probably some processes that are part of other apps I’ve installed but the rest does look like it is part of the core operating system (OS).

I would say "phew" but I'm mostly sanguine about this. My processing is down at three to five per cent as I type, meaning that whatever's being stored, it's not necessarily clogging up the system. There is the whole debate about poorly written, bloated OS code, which shouldn't be ignored but equally, I'm sure there are a number of things I could switch off and save a goodly percentage; also, I am using certain features that have an understandable overhead, such as the search indexer (26MB). Ultimately however, while RAM may be cheap, I do feel slightly frazzled that quite such a large quantity of it should be required just to keep the lights on, and I'm not absolutely sure why "tuning" should be seen as a geek pastime, and not a core capability.

What other options exist? Get a Mac of course, and I am seriously considering this, not just to satisfy my feelings that memory should be treated as a precious commodity but for a number of other reasons. Get Linux is another possibility, but that's usually back to the geeky-tweaky thing and it raises a whole bunch of compatibility issues. Get a life and stop worrying about it, is where my thinking is at currently, particularly now I have gone through the "get more RAM" option. All the same, I do find myself wondering, or indeed hoping, whether Microsoft is reaching the point where it will run out of things to add. The only thing I can think of round the corner is virtualisation, but I do believe that a well-written virtual layer should exist as part of the operating system anyway, in which case it could itself be part of the solution. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

In the meantime, should I bite the bullet and re-enable all those sexy Aero features? I think I'll leave it just a while before I do, as I want to enjoy the feeling of that glut of memory just a little bit longer. It'll be nice while it lasts.

By Jon Collins