My laptop has two slots for RAM, and currently has two 512 MB chips, for 1 GB. Windows XP is running terribly slow on it, so I want to upgrade the RAM. I could buy two 1 GB chips to replace both of the current 512 MB chips, to give me 2 GB of RAM. Or, the price is the same to buy one 2 GB chip, to replace just one of the 512 MB chips, and give me 2.5 GB total. The RAM it takes is PC2-4200 533MHz DDR2.

What do you think would be better: buying two 1 GB chips so it can take advantage of dual-channel operation, or buying one 2 GB chip to end up with more total RAM but not dual-channel operation? Like I said, price is the same, so performance is the only consideration.

I'm not doing anything especially intensive like video or photo editing -- just having multiple Office programs open, playing music, browsers, etc., but currently even opening the first application takes forever. If it matters, the laptop is a Toshiba Qosmio G25-AV513 running Windows XP Media Center SP3.

Thanks! Kevin