Creating a VM and allocating Memory

Hi All,

I'm new to VMWare, and I would like to create a VM on a PC running windows 7. The VM would be installed with Linux OS. My system has a memory of 4GB. My question is: If I allocate 1.5 GB to this new VM Machine running Linux, does that mean that even if the VM Machine running Linux is powered off, my PC running windows 7 is left with only 2.5 GB. I know that Hard disk space once allocated to VM Machine, you can't re-use even if VM is powered off, but not sure about memory. Appreciate if anyone can provides details memory usage.

Thanks,

KTR