15GB 5600 rpm HD I understand after a re-boot my RAM is basically empty so when I try to start Win Explorer, Outlook Express or MS Money it'll take a while (60 seconds). However, when I close them all and re-open them later it still takes the same amount of time. I figured that with 512RAM they would all still be in memory and the load time would be much faster. Why isn't that true? But, if I open just 2 of the above...close them and re-open it works pretty quickly. Or do I just expect to much out of my machine?

Outlook Express has to make a connection to your ISP, and RAM has nothing to do with. MS Money is a fairly large program, so it takes time for it to open. I am not sure why you would be opening Windows Exployer a lot? If it is Internet Explorer you are talking about, it also has to make a connection through the ISP. Your firewall and antivirus can also have an impact on the connection times for Internet Exployer and Outlook Express. Once the initial connection is established it is faster after that. You can also see how fast a second visit to the same website you visit. For most users there is no noticiable performance difference from 256 to 512, you would have to use sisoft-sandra or some other performance measuring tool to determine the actual performance increase.