Hey Snapshot, which laptop is it again?  I remember that it's a Toshiba, but don't remember the model number.  And you're running XP, correct?  I usually just set virtualization to default as that's usually plenty.  While you can change the amount of virtual memory, I seem to remember that there is a negative impact on speed after a point.  Don't forget that virtual memory is stored on the hard drive and it takes longer to access info off the hard drive than off of RAM.

"I have 1.5 GB of RAM in this laptop, what's the maximum I can set my virtual memory to?"

You can set the virtual memory to as much as the maximum capacity of the hard drive.  However, there is no point to do so (if your PC has to swap 100GB of virtual memory to hard disk, it will be slower than a turtle).

The "unofficial rule of thumb" for virtual memory settings should be:

• minimum:  same as physical memory of the PC
• ideal:  1.5x the physical memory of the PC (I believe this is XP's default setting)