If you open Windows Task Manager youll see that the "devenv.exe" process is taking you 35Mb minimum amount of memory...
Considering that the IDE have some memory leaks, after working on your project a few hours, it will increase considerably... to about 60Mb...
Tops, Ive seen some of my projects using 130Mb of my RAM resources...
Assuming that you have the Windows 2000 OS installed, the minimum amount recomended for that OS its exactly 128Mb!
I think youve already reached the point here... if when you compile, the OS its already using the HD to supply the necessary RAM space it will be about 10+ times slower...
Currently Ive 2 computers to work on...
A Laptop P4 2,66Ghz with 512Mb DDR266, and a Desktop P4 2,5Ghz with 1024Mb DDR333... everything work smoothly...
As we speak of resources, consider buyng allways the fastest HD system you can achieve.
Therere already some 60Gb HD at 72000 rpm for laptops and for desktops consider a RAID 0 implementation with at least 2 SATA HDs...
Performance really matters...
Alex