well, I kept the gateway.
DWM.exe is a MEMORY FUCKING WHORE. (vista desktop manager)
That + FireFox = SHIT Maybe I'll buy another gig of Ram
Task Manager is NOT an accurate representation of memory consumption. It includes shared memory when it displays the information. Even so, when the DWM is running the old subsystem in place for legacy reasons (Windows XP's rendering stuff basically) is turned off. I'm willing to bet that they take up about the same amount of memory if not more by a small margin.
Unused memory is wasted memory, as stated before the memory manager on Vista will cede priority to Applications which need it (ReadyBoost and SuperFetch come to mind as ones that would free up their memory to give to a hungry application)