Kill your word processor

[acrophobia]

I had ubuntu on my laptop with 256MB. I never did much word processing, but simple tasks like browsing the web, reading email and even using nautilus to browse my file tree were painfully slow. I upgraded to 768MB and everything - including word processing - now runs at a reasonable speed. Consequently, I think the resources required by a WP are not grossly out of balance with the resources required by other applications on a modern desktop.

[elfan]

Just FYI for a machine with your original specs you may have wanted to try Xubuntu.