bearing in mind that there are various versions of windows 7 ,some more demanding than others regarding hardware .2gb is regarded as pretty much the minimum for memory ,while 4gb would be fine for most cases ,if your into a lot of memory intensive softwares ,vidoe/photo editing etc. you will soon find yourself wishing you had 8gb . though a 32bit system will not see all of your memory (if you install 4gb) it will work better than with 2. if you install it in 64bit you can fit as much as your motherboard can take . your memory is the easiest way to speed up a pc .you wont actually notice much difference if you fit a faster processor, fitting one of the newer SSD (solid state drive) will give yuo a nice speed boost over a conventional hard drive ,thoughif your laptop is recent ,it may alredy have one.

I have just had a new computer delivered today. The item came with a 2Gb chip, with the retailer recommending a further 2Gb chip for £11.00 (Crucial or Kingston) or 2x4Gb chips for £36.00. The retailer stated that 2Gb was the bare minimum for Windows 7.

Looking through some of the paperwork for the new computer I had delivered yesterday, the Asus motherboard booklet seems to suggest " 32-bit Windows 7 = 4GB (of which it might only recognize 3GB?) and 64-bit Windows 7 = over 4GB".