Error: cannot allocate vector of size 3.0 Gb

Hello,

I have read recent posts on this topic (Dr. Ronnen Levinson's Monday 02:39:55 
pm), but before I install a 64 bit system, and purchase more RAM, I want to 
make sure I understand this interesting issue.

I was attempting to plot a data frame containing Dow Jones stock information:

length(Date)

[1] 19957

length(Close)

[1] 19957

head(DowJones)

      Date     Open     High      Low    Close     Volume Adj.Close
1 03/26/08 12531.79 12531.79 12309.62 12422.86 4055670000  12422.86
2 03/25/08 12547.34 12639.82 12397.62 12532.60 4145120000  12532.60
3 03/24/08 12361.97 12687.61 12346.17 12548.64 4499000000  12548.64
4 03/20/08 12102.43 12434.34 12024.68 12361.32 2078450000  12361.32
5 03/19/08 12391.52 12525.19 12077.27 12099.66 1203830000  12099.66
6 03/18/08 11975.92 12411.63 11975.92 12392.66 1263390000  12392.66

tail(DowJones)

          Date   Open   High    Low  Close  Volume Adj.Close
19952 10/08/28 240.17 243.33 237.72 239.55 3940000    239.55
19953 10/05/28 240.00 243.08 238.22 240.44 4360000    240.44
19954 10/04/28 237.75 242.53 237.72 240.00 4330000    240.00
19955 10/03/28 238.14 239.14 233.60 237.75 4060000    237.75
19956 10/02/28 240.01 241.54 235.42 238.14 3850000    238.14
19957 10/01/28 239.43 242.46 238.24 240.01 3500000    240.01

plot(Date, Close)

Error: cannot allocate vector of size 3.0 Gb

I currently have installed R 2.60, from source, onto Linux SuSE 10.2. I 
believe it is a 32 bit install:

dmesg | grep bit 
...
hpet0: 3 32-bit timers, 25000000 Hz

I have 1GB of RAM, with circa 883.61 not allocated to hardware after boot. 
I naively thought 19957 rows of data would be easily handled by a fairly new 
computer. R was able to cease execution, and place control back onto its 
interpreter, while a Chart attempt in OpenOffice locks up OpenOffice.

So,  will installation of a 64 bit Operating System, and at least an 
additional 1GB of RAM  suffice to generate memory space for a 3.0 Gb vector, 
in R?

Much appreciated, time to buy a new computer?

John