How much memory do most have?

[Met-AL]

16GB just because it was cheap and I learnt my lesson with my last PC regarding trying to buy just what I need now and upgrading later.

Oddly enough, CHKDSK will use all the ram that is available when running a sector scan.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I turn off SWAP because I feel for what I do it is not necessary now that I have 16GB of ram. Same reason I turn off lots of extras I don't need in the BIOS. (Serial ports, parallel ports, on board audio, extra storage controllers, etc. etc.)

If I don't use it, it goes off.

Another reason for this is because swapping can be very unpredictable. Sometimes the system decides to swap stuff even when it is absolutely not necessary. All this does is slow down the system.

In order to make sure that I have no unnecessary slowdowns I turn swap off. I do this knowing full well that it can become an issue if I ever run out of RAM, but I haven't yet, and I don't think I will in the future (this is WHY I got the amount of RAM that I did.)

 

[Met-AL]

I really don't feel like debating this till the cows come home as it won't change anyone's mind that has some preconceived notion in their head that turning off the swap file will improve performance and that they know more about Windows than MS's own engineers do.

Turning off the swap file is not a wise thing to do and it won't help performance anyways.

 

[/dev/null]

I don't put less than 8GB in any machine I have to work regularly with.
8GB chips are getting cheap(er) now. You can drop 32GB in now for $500. 6 months from now it'll be $250.

Newegg has 16GB on sale for $57. Why would you put less? $57 isn't a dinner for 2 in downtown Chicago....