the best way to upgreade your pc performance, minimize the usage of virtual memory..buy installing a lot of RAMs... 2 GB should be sufficiant for today apps.

For convinient purpose, let it at auto mode. Unless you really wanna mess your hand to squeze minimal performance boost by set it manually, which as the side effect will make your hard disk fragmented slower.

Another trick is to set fix amount of your pagefile in other partition (the most outer plate of your fastest hard disk) and max cluster size for the partition...

But if you are heavy or power user, 1 GB of RAM sometime not sufficient, espcially for serious game (oblivion is a good example), high resolution photo edition, video edit and coding, hosting private server for online game, multi tasking user....and when you disable page file, and your PC already use up all the 1 GB RAM..what will happen? Crash boom bang.

2 GB is the best bet for current trend (2006)