Burning ISO flash drive seems problematic?

[Moltke]

I mentioned in my first pst that I did some "speed dating" with distros last April. (I collected memory-usage info. LL wouldn't boot then, and I didn't pursue it.). When I got this new laptop a couple weeks ago, I thought I'd collect the memory-usage comparisons again. I wanted to see how compatable this laptop is with Linux, how many distros woul install.

One question, besides a terminal, were those systems running any other programs? or just booted and idle? If the latter they seem quite high.