On average between 800mb - 1.1G on a 2G XP Pro system. Main offenders are Firefox and Thunderbird taking up about 150mb each after running for most of the day. If I kill them and restart each, they start at about 50mb then just keep growing and growing and growing! (Still better than dealing with the headaches of Outlook or IE!)

I figured you didn't have WiFi. I was talking about a WIRED Ethernet port. I would assume if it has USB that it would have a RJ45 Ethernet jack on it. (Yeah I know! Never assume!) Does it have a PCM/CIA (expansion) slot? If so, try and find an old PCM/CIA network card like a D-Link or one of the old Xircom cards or any thing that isn't to off brand, throw that in and most current liunx distros will have a network install option and drivers to almost all WIRED PCM/CIA cards. If it doesn't have either and RJ45 jack OR a PCM/CIA expansion slot, and it has USB, thats one strange laptop you have there! Good luck! :-D

Have you tried doing a network install with Linux? That laptop HAS to have a nic in it right?