My father has so ***** many background utilities running that the computer is slow as a snail when it has "only" 512 MB. 1 GB is a must for him, I would even go to 1.5 or 2 if I were him.

Maybe he should run a spyware removal tool.. and prevent them all from loading at startup. They are not only using ram, they are likely using CPU cycles as well. And I guess your solution to that would be: get a faster cpu, right?

Careful how you use minimum.. Most of the latest games will run fine with 512mb, and may even run with 256mb. Just takes a while to load. Prices are starting to drop again, so wait a month or so for the cheap summer prices, grab some ram, and they will go up by sept again.

Actually, I wasnt calling for help lol I know for a fact that its only low RAM that is making his computer slow. - he has no spyware at all - all the utilities are mostly not using cpu power at all - he already has a 3.4 ghz p4 - after adding another 512 MB the computer became 10 times faster