Questions for computer techs

I heard in some forum that the average number of processes running in vista at any one time should be around 40-50 generally speaking and that if you are running more than this that you can expect problems with a slow system and application crashes. Is there any truth to this theory and if so, how do you know which process would be safe to end/disable?
Also, if someone is having problems with application crashes (ex; IE7, microsoft windows optimization tool, yahoo suite installer, windows live messenger ect, ect.) that this can be the result of a bad internet connection (most of these apps require the internet)?

Search in the tutorials section, there is a list of what processes you can safely disable.

The number of processes running depends upon what you have installed of course. Every extra process requires time to load and initialize at startup, uses RAM, and gobbles CPU cycles however few they may be.

The faster machine you have the less noticeable it becomes, but there is always a performance hit.

Internet connection issues would lead to messages like "disconnected" or "could not load page", but not likely to crash. If it's a crash, then it's most probable related to something else.

Thanks for the info. I will visit the tutorials section for the details. I appreciate the help as I am sure everyone in this forum does. Even if they don't express it! :D