I do notice a decrease in performance so now I do care about which programs are mem hogs. I don’t think nearly 300 megs is really the amount of memory an AV program would/should allocate in anticipation of things to come. With avast claiming over 300 megs of the 380 megs currently in use, I’m very concerned about more loss of performance once I start any program heavier than my browser (Opera) or my MP3 player.