[snip]

>> yes, certainly getting more RAM would help. but if 1 GB RAM + swap will
>> give me aprox same performace as 2 GB RAM -- why should i pay more?
>
> Fair question, but based on a false premise - the answer is that 2GB of
> RAM will potentially give you much better performance than 1GB RAM +
> swapfile. The performance increase will however depend greatly on what you
> are doing and how much more than 1GB of RAM your day-to-day use requires
> and I suspect that you probably don't use much more than 1GB RAM.
>
> Turn the update speed to low on your task manager and occasionally make
> the performance tab full screen and check the page file useage history -
> this is actually memory usage, not pagefile usage!

Addendum - I've just remembered the data at the bottom of task manager -
bottom left box (commit charge). The Peak figure is the highest amount of
memory that has been required since you opened task manager.