This is how much memory my laptop is using...WITH NOTHING RUNNING

I guess it is. I provided that as a reference.

 

in a perfect world XP would just be improved on every so often like OS X is.

 

You paid someone to do that?

 

Doing clean windoze installs is fairly easy. Insert Windoze disc, boot from CD. Format windoze partition. Reinstall.
Wait, dont tell me you have a single partition for everything? Well, its a laptop so I guess you do.

 

Windows 7 and 8 are both miles better than windows xp.

 

Fuck XP and the horse it rode in on.

Or, you know, keep using synchronous file I/O like an 80s DEC mainframe. Whatever.

 

People complain about Windows on lowend machines, nearly every OS on lowend machines or poorly maintained machines you will get problems. OS X isn't a god send like many say it is, I had so many problems using it while studying I ended up using a crappy XP machine to get shit done.

 

OS X default DE is quite demanding. Linux is a different kind of animal though - you can use lightweight desktop environment, turn off unneeded services, and everything will be very fast. There are special distributions for older machines without huge amounts of RAM. I have old PC with PIII Tualatin at 1.5GHz and 384Mb of RAM, it runs most tasks smoothly, including movies up to 720p.
Of course you won't be able to run latest version of Firefox with 20+ tabs opened, but everything else is just fine. I had plans to add more RAM, but never bothered - this machine does only a few specific things so i left it as is.

 

BTW, this is what my resource monitor is showing with like 5 Chrome windows open:

 

All ram "in use" the way it should be. Windows 8 is actually very very good. Shame about the start menu and needing start8, but soon as you install that - its better than 7 (and XP) in pretty much every way.

 

I installed Win 8.1 recently, maybe it has better perfomance, though I did not see it. But Windows 8.1 is terrible and confusing for advanced user.
Classic Shell and qttabbar helps though.

 

2000 -> XP -> Vista

They all required learning where microsoft decided to move a few options.
But yes, when I said "almost everyway" - unfortunately you cant get away from the metrol UI entirely - as a few options are only accessible there.

Fortunately, you dont use those very often

 

If Win 9 will be even more tablet-oriented I migrate to Kubuntu, which is very nice (use it on very slow netbook). I've never seen a system with such interface inconsistency.

 

Mine doesn't look too much different from you guys.

 

Yours looks like mine. Lots of precached files that's why you only have 112MB if "free" ram.

7force has nearly half his ram doing nothing, which is just a waste.

 

Unfortunately the longer I leave crypto coin wallets open the more ram they seem to use.

 

I'm on Windows 7.

 

Windows 7 precaches too. Was introduced with vista. Look a teancum's which is also win7

 

UGH I turned my laptop on to do updates. It's taking 10 mintues to find shit and just as long to install MSE.

Fuck it I'm done. I'm looking into Mint now.

 

Pretty sure millions use it just fine, problem might not be your OS.

If you cant install and use windows properly, I dont think Linux is going to help you much. Wait until some of your hardware doesnt work out of the box and see how much you enjoy that.