[zeugma]

Nah--I run W2k on a 256M VM, along with another Linux VM using only 512M of RAM. I run both of these and my host OS on a 1GB laptop.

HAH! I'm so cool... my laptop has 2GB of ram. Running FC5, I can run 2 FC5 VMs and XP... without touching my swap space.

One thing to keep in mind if you are using vmware, you can actually oversubscribe your ram, and vmware will only use what it needs as opposed to the entire memory space requested.  

[ShadowAce]

my laptop has 2GB of ram.

I had a choice when I bought mine--2GB of slower RAM or 1GB of DDR400. I chose the faster ram.