Yup, one thing i was thinking. But people have their own budgets. I have always had the mentality that i will expand, improve, etc, any peice of gear i have that is very valuable to me. My computer being the most import peice of gear i have with my current set up.
That said, i've used a similar machine to mine with 1 gig of ram (specs are in previous post but basically 2.19ghz amd athalon/2 gigs of ram) with no real noticeable difference. But the jump from 512 to a gig was defineatly noticeable. 2 gigs was still worth the money to me though, i don't feel like i'm missing out, etc.