Q: I heard that adding another memory stick will make it run a bit faster but I'm sceptical.
A: hi ian yes this is correct,apart from upgrading your processor a memory upgrade is the best upgrade you can do for your p.c and as you have allready stated 256mb of memory is a painfully small amount of memory and with newer programs and games requiring alot more than this a upgrade is your best option as a immediate purchase i would double your current memory and add another 256mb ram memory module,you would see massive improvements this way and you would also find programs and games run alot better and even web browsing would be better than before however as i say to everyone else on answers,you have never got enough memory,the more the better and with windows vista you should be looking at 2gb as a bare minimum however 512mb for windows xp is fine,and is far better than just 256mb,however since windows xp only requires 64mb to run you need to be looking for whats slowing down your p.c in the first place my initial guess would be spyware and adware,this is the most common reason for slow performance and all you need to do is run a spyware scan with a decent anti-spyware program like "spybot" (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html) finally allthough theres only three main types of desktop memory you are best visiting the memory website at http://www.crucial.com/ run the online memory utility on the main page and this will scan your system and return a report on the correct memory for you to purchase,and since its a live evaluation you know the information is correct if you can though ian buy as much memory as you can,if your pc can support 2gb then try to use all the memory banks,and if it supports 4gb thats what you need to aim at however as with all memory upgrades you may need to sacrifice some of your modules when adding larger modules,so for example if you have 2 x dimm slots filled with 2 x 512mb memory modules and you wish to upgrade to a maximum 2gb of ram you will need to sacrifice the two 512mb modules and buy 2 1gb modules however some local pc vendors will use your sacrificed memory as part-ex towards the price of your new memory so you may be able to save some money that way,however consult the shop manager about this any problems let me know good luck ian !