ram problem

I am not going to debate the totals with you. Even doing top in terminal the totals don't add up. This has come up in these threads time and time again.

But you missed something else I said in my first post to attempt to address the performance problems:

When was the last time you verified/repaired your drives with Disk Utility? Boot from installer dvd or recovery partition and run Disk Utility from there.

Try a smc reset.

Have you tried that stuff?

X423424X wrote:

I'm curious how AE shows you have 3.88GB.

Maybe you should Apple Hardware Test to check the ram or Rember to do some additional ram checks.

That is common for older Mac's that share the RAM with the Vid card.

kali90 wrote:

I still would like to know, if I'm using approx 1.5 GB RAM why are there only 203 MB RAM left, when I have 4 GB RAM..

thank you..

That is because of the way OS X works. Once you open a program and it gets loaded into memory even after you close it OS X retains some of the RAM it was using just in case you Re-Open it again. That is the Inactive Memory of which you have over 1GB.

Firefox is using nearly 1GB of RAM all by it self. Not sure why any browser would be using so much RAM. Along with that the Firefox Shockwave plugin is using another 300+ MB of RAM. Putting the total over 1.2GBs.

To get back to freeing up some RAM did you open terminal and type in purge? If not do that and see what AM then reads.

Simple fact is you have to much stuff running. With page outs at over 3GBs and swap used at over 2GBs that tells me you need, More RAM or to run less programs at any one time, and use the Purge command on a regular basis.

Open terminal (in Utilities) and type:

man purge

It will describe what it does.

why does this thing always log me off (why no "keep me logged in" option??)

I click on link in email notif., but have to log in, after logging in it takes me to Apple fora home page, not to forum linked to in email... so I have to go back to the email and click on the link again.. this is kind of sloppy, usability-wise.. after loggin in, it should take me to forum I was initally trying to get to..

Are you quitting the browser when not using it? If so then you do have to log in. I use Fifrefox and it remembers I am logged into these forumns so lon as I don't quit it.

having said that, yes I've been doing the "purge" thing, that someone suggested last night.. I find it's very useful, it goes from, say, 300 MB to 1.5 GB right away.. so it's almost like rebooting (it says in man) but main thing to me is it clears RAM that was being used by prog's I closed..

Ok, great.

The difference between 3.88GB and 4GB could be due to a display screen buffer on certain Macs.

Your Firefox is WAY too big. If that is the currecnt version, you need to cut down on how much History you are keeping. I argue that most users need only ONE DAY of History, and anything more can be searched for just as easily as found in History. And clear FireFox caches as well.

The Blue section of the pie chart is cached files. If needed, it will be purged automatically, or you can do it manually as several readers have suggested.

The number to watch out for when deciding if you have enough memory is PageOuts. It increases until you restart, but the number represents transfers when NO memory was available, and stuff had to be off-loaded to disk to continue working.

I also don't know why Firefox would be using so much..

Firefox is one of my main memory hogs... 815.87MG right at this minute. It can jump up to 900MB+. I'm running the Firefox 13 beta but it's always been a RAM eater...

Clinton

I think that the OP is using Firefox as well - that was what was 'eating up' a large chunk of RAM.

I'm not sure, exactly, what the poster is trying to say... that links in Mail take him to a home page where he has to log back in? I don't have that problem in Firefox, either (but it's always open in any case).

kali90 - could you explain exactly what's happening? Are you clicking on link in a mail message in Mail? And then having to log back in to a forum, say, in Firefox?

Curious,

Clinton