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In a word, no. Adding RAM makes the computer run smoother when doing heavy tasks or when running several applications at the same time. Some people seem to be under the impression that have a ton of RAM is equivalent to having a faster processor. The less your computer has to access from the hard drive, the quicker the application will respond. If you're simply running Safari, iTunes, iChat, Microsoft Office and iPhoto, I doubt you'd see much difference at all. Unless you have a habbit of running lots of applications at the same time as well as some hefty Dashboard widgets, you're probably going to be fine with 1Gb.
 
In a word, no.

The (slightly) more complicated answer is that you'll see performance gains if your computer is experiencing a significant number of regular page-outs, and you will not if it is not.

Of course, some basic information like... what kind of computer you have, what OS it runs on and what version, what software you use, etc, might actually be useful too. ;) But if you view the pageouts to VM/swap, however that's done in the OS you use, you'll get the answer without providing us any useful information. ;)
 
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