Hardware Buffer

[kmanshi]

Please accept my apology for not having the error message verbatim. I'm running an MBOX to a Dell Inspirion 1100. When I first got the laptop, it had 256MB of memory, and I kept getting an error that stated something to the tune of, "audio processing is conflicting with other CPU processes. If this continues, try lowering the hardware buffer settings". This was happening whilst recording in a live setting off two Rode NT5's. At the time, PT was totally dogging the laptop, so I upgraded memory.

I'm now running PT on 640MB of memory, and I have noticed drastic improvements in performance. Whilst recording in a live setting last night, I got that error message again. My current settings have the hardware buffer set to 1024. My questions are these:

1) What gets buffered to this space?
2) Is lowering the buffer a good idea? (more is better??)
3) Would more memory be a better solution? Is memory even the issue?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions offered. I'm sure you picked up on the fact that I am pretty new at this. I'm going to head off to the search tool to see what I can find on the hardware buffer.