Are 2 gigs of RAM overkill?

I used this online program to scan our computer. The prices for the RAM they sell are better than, the electronic stores in town. I imagine they use this scanner as a tool to get people to buy from them. Nothing wrong with that. But is it accurate?

There's really no such thing as too much RAM, but like almost everything, the law of diminishing returns applies. After about the 1GB mark, MOST users see a rapidly declining rate of performance increase. So, anything over the 1GB mark usually doesn't end up being a very cost effective thing to do for MOST people. If you or your friend found some really good deal on quality RAM from a reliable retailer, by all means take advantage. Otherwise, it's probably better to stop around the 1GB mark, and spend some of that money on other things, or just save it. Just be sure to ONLY buy quality RAM from a reputable source. Not all RAM is created equal, so I'd stick to well known brands such as Kingston, PNY, and Crucial. I'd also stick to some of the highly reputable resellers like Amazon, NewEgg, Allstarshop, etc.

And I also want to emphasize the most users part. There are some who occasionally come out from under their rocks on this forum who seem to have great difficulty understanding such distinctions, so I wanted to make a special point of drawing attention to that. Some people may benefit from having more than 1GB of RAM. For example, if you or your friend wanted to use something such as the Squid caching proxy server to speed up their web browsing, additional RAM could be of great benefit. If either of you are big into gaming, it could also be of great benefit. If you have a lot of complex Excel sheets with large numbers of calculations in them, that also could benefit from a lot of RAM. Again, just be sure you buy a brand with a reputation for quality from a source that has a similar reputation. Otherwise, there's no telling what you'll end up getting, and if the company will even be around long enough for you to complain. Plenty of sites set up shop, accept a huge number of orders, take the money and then run. You're lucky if they send you some part that was set to be disposed of by the manufacturer.