RAM Question:

There are several signs indicating it may be time to upgrade your memory. If you see your mouse pointer turn into an hourglass for significant periods of time, if you hear your hard drive working, or if your computer seems to work more slowly than you expect, the reason is probably insufficient memory. When physical memory is insufficient, the system uses Hard Disk Space as memory. This is called "Virtual Memory". Since access time of Physical memory is in tens of NanoSeconds and Access time of Hard Disk is in MilliSeconds, the system slows down considerably.