That's the second time in this thread that the suggestion has been made that "it's a Windows box" has been offered as an explaination for this problem. It may well be true, but as a Windows user, I'd like to understand the basis for the conclusion?

Assuming perl is using the same algorithm to request memory from the OS in whatever chunks perl requests it, is linux/unix/VMS/* that much more efficient at making this available to perl?

Are there any stats available to demonstrate this?