"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The way I look at it, its no different than any other OS release since 95. If OS's are going to advance, technology has to go along with it. 512mb is the recommended for XP, which is a 5 year old OS. This is a new OS, 512mb more isnt that bad of a number. Heck I only had 256megs when XP pro came out by the time I switched to Vista I had 2 gigs in my XP Pro box. Frankly memory is so cheap right now all PC's should just come out with 1 gig minimum, 2 gigs would be better.