I think you may find that the overall experience with Vista and Ram is a lot more pleasant. It was really nice in XP to crack open task manager and see that you have 2 gigs of ram and a whooping 1.8 free.
Vista is a lot better at managing Ram then prior versions of Windows. No longer look in the task manager and see that it is using this huge number and think to yourself "wow...this sure is eating up my Ram".
Unused Ram is wasted ram! I have used Linux for years and Linux uses this theory when it comes to memory and FINALLY Windows got it right!
Ram will be released and refreshed when needed to accommodate new programs you may open. Now Vista likes to keep small chunks of your most used programs in memory for later use if you so decide to use that program again, if you don't it will release it for something new.
Long story short, Vista is not the "resource hog" that some people like to claim it is! It is more efficient! So for some reason it doesn't seem to be freeing Ram for your new programs, start worrying! But if it working fine, it is doing what it was designed to do and enjoy the benefits of having memory management that not any previous version of windows can even come close to.
Hope I was a help!
