Actually, if any of you guys look at the Home Basic Minimum requirements then it says 512 Mbs of Ram. I HAVE seen a lappy running Vista Basic with only 512 Mbs but it was idling at about 75% ram. So, yes 1gb is a need nowadays for anything. But why don't you give Vista a try, its not slow and any rumors you heard are probability not true. Try it and I bet u will be sad when they stop making service packs for XP.(I think they might do that after another year cuz everyone is so pissed about vista and that they just don't like change when change is part of life.)