1: Buy RAM that is the same speed as what's already there.. 2: You shouldn't see any really big difference (except MCE will not join a domain).. 3: Since it's shared memory, your perfomance won't be all that great (mine is a dedicated ATI X700 128MB card and it ain't great really, although I can play BF2). 4: You will have to active Office or it'll stop working.. 5: This means that, should you decide to upgrade to Vista, that this laptop will run at least some version of it.. 6: I have a V4000t and it's been a great laptop. Mine has 1GB RAM and it has performed well. Warning: Mine gets extremely hot after being on for any real length of time (30 + minutes).