12.4mb for kmeleon
7.2 for internet Explorer 5.01 sp1
using win2k with 128mb of ram
thats alot of memory being used

My IE use with a blank page 9576Ko in Task manager.
don't forget that you have to add one explorer.exe 7992Ko and the java machine is embed somewhere.

So the 12.4mo is nothing for a beta version ( with lots of debug code inside ).

Try M17 or NS6 PR2 ( 40 to 60 Mo ).