Question of philosophy (OT?)

[Chris Zakelj <c_(_dot_)_zakelj_(_at_)_ieee_(_dot_)_org>]

One of the things I've noticed in my use of *NIX (whether it be BSD or 
Linux) versus any version of windows is how memory and swap are 
handled.  In the i386 nix world, I've never see swap touched unless 
absolutely necessary (like trying to compile a kernel+userland on i486), 
while windows is constantly swapping stuff out to disk, even when 
there's still well over half the physical memory still free.

I figure the nix folks are doing things the 'right' way (swap was never 
meant for active storage, or so I was taught), which begs the 
question... What's MS thinking?  What sort of gains are they trying to 
realize by constantly shuffling things off, only to read it back a 
minute or two later when I switch apps?