Have you people ever heard of benchmarks? Hmm, doesn't look like it. Here is the comparison I was thinking of, a fairly exhaustive one done by Firingsquad.com:
128MB v. 256MB.
Other than 2-3% differences, the largest gain for upgrading from 128MB to 256MB is with Office applications under Windows 98. Otherwise, the improvement is unnoticeable except in benchmarks. Since
shawn_16 says he's a gamer under Win98, the necessity of 256MB is just not there. Sure, Office might work a few seconds faster, but if you only use it once a week, who cares? Some games might show an improvement with more memory, but FPS ones do not.
Try backing your statements up with some real information instead of just assuming bigger is better. Yes, there are applications that benefit from greater memory (Photoshop runs noticeably faster), but if the person in question
doesn't use those applications, then the difference is pointless. My upgrade from 128MB to 256MB (and even Cas-3 to Cas-2) showed no perceptible increase in framerates for the games I play (CS, UT, Q3, some strategy games, Sims).
As I mentioned, if cost or system stability are issues, 128MB is the wiser choice (unless matching DIMMs, obviously, which doesn't exhibit problems that mixing memory manufacturers seems to sometimes). Plus, leaving the PCI bus speed at 33MHz and leaving AGP at 66MHz is going to show a greater increase in speed along with 933MHz than if you underclock those for 868MHz (using 1/4 divider on 124MHz = 31MHz and 62MHz).
I have two systems, one with 256MB and one with 128MB (first one runs Win98, second Win2K). The only difference that seems to make a great impact when running Windows operations is the fact that the first computer has a 7200rpm drive while the second is at 5400rpm. Boot times are skewed because the first computer uses SCSI components (and has three optical drives total).