Newb performance issues

I am trying to run SW11 on my laptop doing fairly simple modeling on large files.   My machine is a Dell Precision M4400 with a Intel Core 2 Duo @2.93GHz and 4 GB of ram running Win 7 64 bit with a NVIDA Quadro FX 1700M.

My problem is that I am regularly running at 85%+ memory usage and many times it is maxing out when I perform feature patterns, causing them to fail.

Is 4 GB enough for medium to large models?  Is there any recommended system maintenance or cleanup tasks that I can perform to improve the performance of this machine?

SolidworksAdministration