Definitely welcome back! The candle is always burning mate. Going "geek", why on earth would you run Vista when you need to run a stable system with little to no memory. Be good to your self, go back to XP. I think its also a savings too, if don't use the newest products.
I was looking up SIM 2 for Linux:
http://transgaming.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=855
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=230255
So far .. I've been wicked nervous about switching from Windows XP to Linux.. I think if I'm going to take that switch. I was at the computer store yesterday and sales chap tried to sell Vista on a customer, showing him all the gismos that Vista did.. Yah.. it looks good, but is it useful and reasonably priced. 2GB of RAM is almost a grand CAD, for many folks.. that isn't possible. The customer told the agent that it could preform like Ubuntu could he wasn't going to be of interest..
Sorry for the long tangent. But ya.. switching to Windows XP should save you memory usage, or that even Windows 2000.