Python & memory usage

[lebo]

I'm experimenting with using Python as a very low resource usage
systems management agent. Currently the best I'm getting is about a
2.4MByte base usage (python interp only) and with application,
4.8MByte memory footprint on WinXP.  This is probably too high for sme
target systems - ideally under 3MByte memory usage is a good target
for a simple, quiesent stub agent - dynamic loading/unloading of
classes on top of this is ok.
 
Some general questions....
1) Are there ways to reduce the memory footprint of Python to make it
really lean?
2) Compile options?
3) Other options?

Any thoughts appreciated.
L