What to expect after upgrading RAM

Hello everyone, I recently learned that the reason my desktop is painfully slow is that it is running on only 512 MB of RAM with Vista. So I just purchased 1 GB of RAM from crucial.com and am wondering how much better I can expect the computer to run after the installation. I know that Vista works best with 2GB of RAM but I imagine after working off of 512 MB 1.5 GB is going to be like a miracle. Am I expecting too much from this upgrade? Has anyone done a similar upgrade and can tell me about what to expect? Thanks

Oh , just to be neighborly, id say ram is a wonderful addition. But prob. not a miracle. If you ran 512 ram for long, your system didn't come with Vista as OE OS I would guess? How big is the CPU, mine would choke, lots. Just saying, ram alone is not the holy grail. My hope is that your cpu and mobo have been waiting for this since they where joined and your whole world vibrates with exuberance after install.
P.S. yep I've installed more ram on my systems many times and given the right combo (need) it does good things for sure. Install pairs of sticks with same= specs(the specs required by you system). Best wishes.

Vista is a bad place to start when it comes to performance, but 512mb to 1.5gb of ram will help a lot. I used to have 128mb with windows xp and then upgraded to 640mb and I have to say, BIG IMPROVEMENT. It all depends on how much your computer uses on a daily basis. For example, my new computer started off with 1gb of RAm. It worked like a charm. I upgraded to 2gb and the difference was negligible at best. If you're not someone that uses a computer for anything resource intensive (gaming, coding, graphics desgin etc), then 1.5gb should be fine. Your CPU could also be a bottleneck.

The minimum expected memory for Vista is 1GB but there will be certain problems when you try to load heavy applications. Since u have 2rams with 1.5 GB you will find a better improvement. But try to make it 2GB to get the most ;)