[olug] Memory recognized (in)correctly?

[Eric P]

I have 2 512MB sticks in my system.

On boot, BIOS tells me I have 1,047,552k.  It's off a few 'k', but I 
figure there's probably a reason.

But when I run 'free', it's way off only showing 906736k.

$ free
              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        906736     509760     396976          0      38280     246016
-/+ buffers/cache:     225464     681272
Swap:      1052216          0    1052216


Am I reading free's output wrong?  Or is there a problem w/one of my 
memory sticks?

Thanks for reading,
Eric P