Got a great question from someone the other day, who asked me which appliance is the right appliance? They have been using some pretty serious hardware, but recently tried running their presentation on some weaker hardware, and it worked, so they wondered what is the ideal appliance.
The answer to that is there is no "ideal appliance". Your ideal appliance capacity is really determined by your content. If your presentation has a lot of flash and video, more memory and a stronger processor make a significant difference since there is that much more horsepower to drive that content. Flash is a real memory hog, so the more memory you have, the better.
If your presentation is one or two videos or flash items, and then a bunch of images, live data, and bulletins, they aren't intensive on the CPU at all, and a weaker processor and less memory can handle those items no problem.
Finding a good balance is sometimes difficult since processors are improving every day, and with the recent release of the new i3, i5 and i7 processors, which have onboard GPU's to make video and graphic intensive content run that much better, we are even more better off, and getting super strong processors and mountains of memory isn't necessary all the time.
I would recommend running your content for a week or two on the weaker processor and less memory, and see how it holds up. It's all a judgment call based on the performance of the content. The only risk you run is if the client throws a bunch of flash and video content into a play list, it may start to show in the performance of the content.
Any appliance that reboots every night has a real fighting chance of being a good appliance, so if you can tweak the Windows settings to use only what you need as per the tweak sheet and any other tweaks you have learned along the way, perform a regular maintenance on the machine (which can be automated depending on the tool) and reboot it every night, I think you will be surprised by what the weaker machines can accomplish with your content.
My motto is test, test, and test again. If your content STILL looks good, then it is likely a winner.
Let us know what you think!