The SDHC will not speed anything up unless
you boot from it. Extending VM won't speed
anything up either - it just allows more
concurrent apps before Maemo starts
suspending them.
As for mem usage, AbiWord (2.4.6 - 2.6 should be better) didn't make much visible difference in the mem status bar thing. From what I can see, it takes 7 megs, compare to 24 for Opera right now. Gnumeric takes 10, looks like. N800, OS 2007.

I allocated less than the 128M, and that sped things up quite a bit. Next I allocated the whole 128M, and, subjectively, it seems slower.

So whats the final word? To Virtual memory or not to Virtual memory?

Oh and by the way on the n800 which card does it store it on the internal or external?

Seems there IS no final word - Your mileage may vary! For myself, I'm using it.

And it's kept on the internal card.

i don't know if any of you uses garnet vm program to run palm based programs, but i do, and i am having problems with it. I have been getting messages about my memory being full when i hotsync programs in through the garnet vm, and i have 2 gig memory allocated in the internal memory slot. So i don't know what i should be changing that it can recognize that i have alot of space. Please help!!

Garnet VM only allows you to have a max of 64MB set aside for programs (you do set this in the settings tab). You can check how much free memory you have in Garnet VM from the running Palm desktop. I usually just tap on the time in the upper left corner, tap on App, and then on Info.

You can use more than 128mb, here are directions they are for the 770 which needs as much as you can give it with 64mb of ram.
I have used these directions on all my tablets, I suggest doing it over ssh as you must be root and you can copy and paste

My max virtual memory is stuck at 48Mb. I can't choose a bigger one. My internal card size is 8Gb, and has 4Gb free.
I have N800 fully updated.

What could I do to have 128Mb available? Anyone knows?

has anyone used swap for longer period? i have turned it off, because i was afraid it would thrash my sd card.

I have a 1GB sandisk, Kingston - 2GB mmc mobile, and a 4GB minisd, and a 8GB SD.

I run swap partitions, and OS from all these cards. I have (I would guess) reflashed my devices, and recloned my cards hundreds if not thousands of times. I have never ever had 1 card issue.

I really wouldn't worry about it, although my kingstons have lifetimes warranties anyway.

As far as how much is enough, this may be different for different people. If your gonna burn CD/DVD or run KDE I would suggest about 225-256. Just running in maemo, I think 100MB would be plenty, although again it depends on whats running, and how you use your tablet. If you are having random hangs and reboots, consider increasing it