Your computer's memory (RAM) is the space available for running programs to work in. Don't confuse this with your hard disc - that's the space that the files for a program take up. The more RAM your machine has, the more headroom for programs to operate in. If your machine is running low on RAM, the operating system will start to use the (MUCH slower) hard disc instead, which will cause a major decrease in system performance.

256Mb is the smallest amount of RAM we offer, and this is fine for light use - web browsing, word processing etc. It's worth remembering that the onboard graphics will use 16 or 32Mb of this (if you are using the onboard graphics) so moving to 512Mb is a fairly common upgrade. Extra memory helps with most things, especially graphics applications, desktop publishing, games, video work etc. 1Gb may seem like overkill, but Windows PCs seem to be able to make any amount of memory feel like "not enough"!