I expected some differences, but not like this!
The previous memory configuration consisted of one 128 Mb PC100 DIMM module with two each of 16 and 32 Mb PC 66 SIMM modules. The PC100 DIMM was forced to run at 66 MHz speed due to the other SIMM modules on the motherboard. At bootup, the system reported total RAM of 229 Mb.
I decided to see what would occur if I removed the PC100 DIMM module and left the SIMM modules in place. This brought the total RAM down to 98 Mb. Note that SuSE recommends a minimum of 128 Mb of RAM for their Personal 9.1 distribution.
The end results were very surprising. First off, disk access time was considerably faster than before, the KDE desktop appears slightly faster than previously, and if I am using a web browser (I recommend Opera.), loading various web pages while the printer is printing a previous page, the printer is no longer getting bogged down as much.
All this time, the system slowness was caused by that PC100 DIMM running at 66 MHz.
UserAgent: Opera/7.51 (X11; Linux i586; U) [en]
