@meena Ubuntu recommends 25% RAM worth of swap if you don't user the hibernate feature; it recommends ~125% RAM if you do. I don't use it, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to go for 100%.
I don't know what it's used for but when I had 1GB of swap the system monitor showed 100% swap usage at all times!
@darius wouldn't it be cool if Linux had tools that could tell you what's in that swap, and why it was put there??