You may need to confirm this. Otherwise, you might want to increase the swap partition size.
Another option would be to use swap files. http://tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/x1790.html
I haven't tried it personally, so YMMV.
The whole twice the amount of RAM you have is a rule of thumb. If you do not expect to be swapping much, i.e., you are not doing any intensive graphics work, then you will hardly use your swap anyway.
That is a very general statement that is wrong in a lot of cases.
If he does not do anything too intensive I am sure 502MB is enough swap. Depends on configuration I suppose.