Advice building a Win7 box

[PowerToThePeople]

5. I have always wondered

Pack as much RAM into it as you can, it will make a major difference. 16 Gb is a good start. 32 Gb is even better

I have always wondered what the point to this was. Are you running a server? Doing high def video editing? Why the need for so much ram? 2-4GB is still more than enough, even for Windows 7 and Microsoft office.

I truly think that the "industry" is trying to keep Moore's law going. It is obvious that we are reaching a plateau in computing with the differences between newer and older generation computers becoming less and less drastic.

I use Linux mostly. Any old dual core and 2GB of ram will cruise along just fine. Anything more recent than P3 with a gig of ram is very usable. Even a p3 with 512 meg of ram is usable, but you will notice the loss of "speed" in waiting for boot-up and launching applications.