Close down apps to save memory

When you double click the home button on iOS 5 you will see the multitasking bar, when that pops from the bottom you need to hold your finger on any of the running apps icons there.

Then the minus button will appear in the upper left corner of each app's icon.

Touch that and the app will close.

Click the home button(or tap on the screen away from the multitaskbar) and you're out of the "minus" mode.

Elf described the process great. This wil help if you are having system or app crashes. I do it a couple of times a day, just because.

Most of the apps in the task bar are really 'recently used' and aren't using memory. In theory, one of the feature of the iOS system is that it watches the memory usage and if needed, shuts those down as needed. But the theory does not always work so well. So a good way to avoid crashes is to clean out the task bar from time to time.

jillfromchesterfield wrote:

...shut down apps to save memory please help

Completely unnecessary. iOS manages its memory as needed, unlike Windows. If an app is not being used, there's no hit to memory usage for the iPad's CPU. The only thing you might want to shut down are apps that are actually running in the background, like Pandora or any app that is maintaining a persistent connection to the internet. Other than that, leave 'em alone unless they're acting buggy.

Rocky, in theory, you are right. In practice, you are wrong. I am convince that there is a hole in the process. Read the threads on system crashes that have erupted since iOS 5. The process is supposed to monitor memory usage, but it is failing some where. ( my guess is safari).

While you could be correct, your guess is as good as anyone's who doesn't have direct knowledge of what's going on inside the box. If you get better results by shutting down certain apps, that's fine.

But for the crashes you're describing, I think it is better to do a complete restore (w/o backup) to get a fresh start -- I'm convinced that these crashes are due to corrupted data in the backup files, which is not necessarily a memory management issue by the OS. But in the interim, sure shut down the apps that seem to be problematic, but that's just a band-aid.