One for the computer peoples I guess.

I just bought some more ram for my little netbook, so it's now running 2gb ram with a 1.83ghz processor.

What exactly does the RAM do? I have been checking stuff out and managed to get a fair bit of extra speed by going through the 'services' and cutting useless background running things.(such as a program designed for touch screens, but it doesn't even have a touch screen) as well as cutting pretty much all of the programs that were booting p on startup.

It's zipping along rather nicely now and I notice that it seems to load up file browser images a lot quicker (say when looking at my pictures folder).

What else could I look at to get an idea of speed. And any tricks for smoother running of the processor?