You're right on the edge of usability with that and vista. Does vista seem like a resource hog looking at used v available physical memory and such even on initial install? Yah. But a lot of those resources are "set aside" in a way so that when other things are launched, it'* quicker.

It'* a more active form of memory mgmt in the way I see it. I haven't had any issues at all with it once I adjusted the settings for indexing iTunes' xml files..

interesting...yeah it was the mem usage with no applications open that piqued me. I had the Ultimate edition, and the DWM ate my processor up. (i'm sure i could have disabled it, but the Aero theme is why i installed vista in the first place)

My systems a Intel Q6600 2.4ghz with 4 gb of ram and nvidea gts 8800 w 640mb ram and my system flies with vista. I really want to upgrade my cpu soon since prices have dropped.