I spent hours cleaning cache and moving everything to an external drive to free up memory on my macbook air. Results were good until I bought clean my mac/genesis. Now I'm back to heavy memory usage. And how can I get rid of 'other'?

christie ann wrote:

I was just told to get rid of ccleaner, now it's gone. This is telling me to use it again.

Unless you tell us what 'this' is we can have no idea of what is happening. The correct answer is to erase everything from your Mac (because the junk will go with it) and reinstall only the things you actually need.

christie ann wrote:

I cannot restore without buying Office again...

If you purchased Office once, and you still have the product key/code, then all you have to do is reinstall or download Office and enter the key/code and you're all set with Office.

You still have Sophos and CleanMyMac3 installed on your Mac. Until your complete remove both of these using the appropriate uninstalled procedure for each, you are going to have nothing but troubles with you Mac.

With only 4 GB of RAM available on your Mac, you should really consider using a different browser that will use less RAM. I would certainly not have Chrome as a login item on that Mac. If you need it start it when you are going to use it and totally quit it when you are finished.

I believe your Office reply was intended for me? You are correct, then without the key/code, you will have to purchase a new one, and Microsoft will not or cannot help you.

I believe your "junk" question is in reply to someone else.

Please try to reply to the person you are really addressing, it will be much less confusing to you and us. 🙂

While it is true that the vast majority of apps can be removed from a Mac by simply dragging them to the Trash, this is not true for apps that put bits and pieces all over the operating system, such as AV software or so called "cleaning" apps. These must be removed using a procedure written by the developer who know where all the bit and piece were placed on your Mac. Hence the reason we keep saying uninstall and not drag to Trash.

Your Mac is full of junk, I have never met you so have no idea about your junk status. The references to Windows stem from Windows users habit of installing any old thing that says it is good at something, usually the something is unnecessary, often it is harmful.

You must remember that there are two different storage system on your Mac.

One is RAM with is 4 GB on your Mac. Where you Mac has the data is using to run and is cleared when it is such down.

The other is a solid state disk with data is stored for time when you Mac is shut down.

The external drive can relieve the amount of storage on the solid state disk but it has nothing to do with RAM.

christie ann wrote:

Yes, I need chrome. I always use google tools. Anyway, it seems I was able to clear a lot of memory manually with the cache and external drive.

Why do you need Chrome? I use Gmail, Google Calendar and other Google features without using Chrome.

As previously noted, clearing caches and using an external drive will not solve the problem that the computer you have no longer has enough RAM to run effectively and that there is no way to add more.

Thanks IdisSeabright, I was attempting to reply to this post but the tread is getting so convoluted I was not able to find the post until after your reply so I will just concur with you here.

I have a customer who is heavily ingrained into the use of Google stuff so I must use it also. Having said that I don't even have Chrome installed on any of my Macs and I am able to use the Google apps on my Macs.

christie ann wrote:

I suppose I can switch to Safari and still use google docs etc, will try that, thanks!

Yes, you can. I do it every day. Note that, even with Safari, keeping a Gmail window open will use a lot of memory. I would recommend you check your email with the built in Mail app rather than by using a browser. If you need to access Gmail through a browser window, close it out when you're done. It will make a huge difference.

Allan Eckert wrote:

Thanks IdisSeabright, I was attempting to reply to this post but the tread is getting so convoluted I was not able to find the post until after your reply so I will just concur with you here.

There is definitely a "Who's on first" feeling to the thread.

Good catch there IdrisSeabright.

I have the Google Mail account I use for mail from the customer under the Mail.app. I find that solution to use far less resources then opening it with a browser. Beside the Mail.app alerts me when there is mail.