I'm in Canada......My computer is a few years old with XP (AMD 2800) and I just bought 1Gig of Ultra memory for 100 bucks delivered after the 50 buck rebate. I went from 3/4 G to 1 3/4 G and the difference is incredible. Switching charts is immediate and i can finally run multiple windows and have my gold java chart running without my computer grinding along at 100% usage. I highly recommend upping your memory. For 100 bucks its a no-brainer. US http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1071020&Sku=ULT31664 CAD http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1071020&Sku=ULT31664 Looks like the rebate has been dropped to 30 bucks off....Still worth it.
Pentium III Tualatin 1.2Ghz 768MB Memory at 133Mhz two video cards; TNT2 32MB PCI, and Nvidia Geforce MX400 AGP Not XP; but Linux 2.4.33 and Xfce 4.2
You don't need to go to 1G but for the price of ram you might as well. Even 384k pulls XP out of the just enough to "plenty" stage and 512k will usually be miles - check your application usages.
I presume you're talking about turning off the page file? Some will claim yes, but there are programs which are setup to "look" for some size of page file and won't or may not run without it. Keep the page file.
If you don't want to upgrade to at least 512 RAM, you could consider using your present computer for something besides trading.
I'm still debating if my PC is worthwhile to upgrade since you can get a spanking new PC with Vista these days for around $300. The 1GB RDRAM upgrade will cost me around $200.
i use old P3 that i bought for 50 bucks with XP and 512mb ram for one of my automated systems. works just fine,paid itself off in first day
From what I've read so far, any Vista machine for $300 is going to have the absolute minimum RAM for VISTA, 512K. I haven't looked for a $300 model but if you find one consider this - The 512K RAM/VISTA combo would probably put you back to using the hard drive swap file. No real gain. However, if you have the operating system disk for your old machine ( XP), buy the new $300 Vista machine, load the XP, and you'll have twice the memory and a new machine with (probably) a faster processor for $100 more than just the memory upgrade. Jack