Actually it will use both , it will slow down to the slower speed one though. The person who had 1gig @400 and 256@266 was probably showing 1256mb ram usable, but it all would have slowed down to the 266 speed. The better choice is to remove the 256mb ram because the speed increase will make up for the lil bit of ram he had.
Using unequal RAM is ok. if it have same clock speed on both, otherwise it may affect the performance..
Unmatched ram may be slower but it is worth it for the increased capacity if you are starved for memory.
Sure you can used both RaM on your motherboard, so that they given extra slot, so now your physical memory is 512+128 = 640.. cheers!!!!