System requirements for Gnucash

[Eric]

I am trying to decide whether to dump $500 on a new laptop or spend $150 to refurbish a pretty decent Latitude CPx.  The Latitude has a 650mhz cpu, and if I refurbish it the RAM would be 512 mb.  One of the key programs that I plan on using on the laptop is Gnucash with Debian Linux, regardless of which laptop I get.  

I've run Gnucash on desktop systems with the same amount of RAM (512 mb) but with faster CPU's and it ran well.  I also tried running it on an older Vaio with 112 mb RAM and a 600mhz cpu, and it crawled.  I am thinking it was the ram, and not the cpu speed, that was the limiting factor on the Vaio, but am not sure.

I am wondering if there are recommended system requirements for Gnucash in terms of RAM and CPU speed, and if so, what those are.