Over 2.5 GB ram problem

[Gary Roach <garyroach@verizon.net>]

I just upgraded my old Intel P4 system with a 3Ghz multithread (2 
processors?) processor and 4 GB ram. I am running Debian Wheezy with a 
KDE desktop. My  present kernel is Linux-3.8-1=686-pae. From reading, I 
think I need to change the kernel to the bigmem version but all of the 
packages shown are for much older versions (or they seem to be). If I 
install the linux-image-686-bigmem dummy package will it automatically 
pick the latest kernel version or not? If not what do I do?

Note: Reason for doing this; cheap used parts that turn a bucket of 
bolts into a reasonably useful system.

Gary R.