How can I determine if slowness in my PC is a direct result of a lack of RAM? Is there anywhere that I can monitor my RAM consumption? I currently have 512MB's.

Yes you can in the windows task manager, also if you download security task maneger there is a way by clicking on the RAM tab once it has loaded, this lets you see which programs are using the most of your RAM or the least. Also a good security program for looking at processes.Security Task Manager - Windows XP process viewer

Tune up utilites also lets you analyse your ram and perform tests on your ram to get the max performance. TuneUp Software International - Home Page

both of these programs are a trial version.

This freeware program also shows you a ram meter so that you can see how much is being used and when on the desktop. CPU & Ram Meter - Reviews and free downloads at Download.com

However memtest86 lets you test your ram to find out if it has errors, you have to burn the image to a disk, then restart and test. (You may have to change the boot sequence in bios to do this). Memtest86 - Reviews and free downloads at Download.com

There are also a lot more programs out there to look at how your ram is performing, this link has some more Search results for ram usage - Free Software Downloads and Software Reviews - Download.com

Hope this helps you, jake