Charlie,

There are several issues here. First of all, it is true
that as you open more applications, your system
resources go down and as you close them, they
go back up... but, they don't go all the way back up.
In other words, each time you open and close IE, you
lose a bit of your system resources. By the time you
do that 25 times - well, you get the picture.

In addition, if you go on-line that many times and you
open any websites, each site you visit will be cached
and that will also slow your computer down. I would
start deleting your cached Internet files by the end of
the day.

As for getting another 64MB of RAM, that will certainly
help. By having 128MB of RAM, you can keep your
IE/connection open all day or at least not open and close
it as often. I went from 32MB to 256MB recently and now
I don't have to close anything ever! (well, almost...)

BTW, if you are running WIN98, you can open up
"Resource Meter" by going to "Start", "Programs",
"Accessories", "Resource Meter" and then you can
watch to see how far down your resources are going.
When they go below 75%, start closing some applications.

Hope this helps. Gail Hutten

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