Inspiron 1520 2GB => 3Gb Ram

At the moment I have a dell insipron 1520, specs in my sig

I am wanting to know will I see a speed increase, or an increase in day to day running of the machine if I take out one of my 1gig sticks and replace it with a 2 gig stick. Obviously I will loose the dual channel memory status, but I read that doesn't affect it much.
At the moment it says I am using 59% memory just using firefox and running media player.
Thanks in advance

 

It will help, but Vista will still use half of it. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

 

I disagree. Unused RAM is RAM-I-can-expect-to-use-when-I'm-not-just-running-Firefox-and-Media-Player. Basically memory that's reserved for more intensive stuff, memory my PC can use when it needs it. If unused RAM is wasted RAM, the heck, Firefox should never update to version 3. Let it be a memory hog [although such a term should not exist if "unused RAM is wasted RAM"] for eternity. But that's just me.

Anyway, with Vista, you'll always want more memory. And yes, dual channel doesn't bring too much of a benefit anymore for it to be a factor in upgrading your memory. Basically, more memory is better. So yeah. Upgrade.

 

you will have dual channel for the first 2 GB

the 1 GB on the first stick and 1 GB on the second stick. the extra 1GB on the second stick won't have dual channel.

 

I did this upgrade on my vostro 1500 and while its not "faster" it is smoother running when having multiple programs open.

 

Yes, except that Vista is not FF. FF actually uses the RAM for various reasons. Vista just holds the RAM up with various functions and releases it if a program needs it, thus, if Vista does not use the RAM, you have 1 GB of RAM just sitting there. If Vista uses the RAM, you have a good chunk of preloaded stuff that aids in opening commonly used programs, while it doesn't hinder loading other large programs that actually demand the RAM, since Vista will release it anyway.

Thus, unused RAM is wasted RAM.

 

It should be noted that free ram means "Free" physical memory in the Vista Task Manager, where there is usually some insanely small number. Vista will try to fill up your memory with SuperFetch Caches.

(however, total - free - cache = application memory).

so, as Lithus said, only the free memory is wasted.

 

You can never go wrong with more RAM!!