Freeing up Ram

Z

ziomatrixacs

Registered
Hey guys, I found a program called Ifreemem on apples site. It basically frees up your ram by stopping unused stuff. (not sure exactly how it works) but it does work! It saved me about 72 mb of ram out of 256mb. ( I only had 3mb free?)

The down side is that it cost $18 which is a little steep considering there is a way you can do it with some app in the Utilities folder. I cant find the app now, and I am not sure what it is called but I think it comes stock on macs. Any reminders would be appreciated!

I used another program called iStat to look at my ram.. here is what it consists of (on a lite look I assume)

Firefox-bin 52mb
Kernal_task 37 mb
Windowserver 10mb
Finder 8mb
Ifreemem 7mb

So this "Kernal task" shows up every time I start my computer. Would any one know what it does and how bad it would be if I pulled the plug on it?
It would be nice if there was a list of OK and Bad to stop in your Ram.
 
Hi zio,

you can't remove the kernel part. The system needs it.
Which version of OS X are you running, and on which Mac? 256 MB RAM is quite little for any version, so you'd notice a huge speed increase adding some more.
 
No, don't stop kernel_task
That's the root service that runs your system software.

The main item that you should look at is System memory usage. Compare page ins to page outs. thousands of Page ins is normal. large numbers of Page outs (thousands or more) is NOT necessary, and often indicates that you don't have enough RAM memory installed.
Memory is dirt-cheap these days, and there's little need to stay with only 256MB of RAM.

One result of adding more RAM memory: Typically, you will have much more free memory!
There's very little advantage to the various utilities that will 'free up' more RAM. Your OS X system is actually quite good at memory use.
 
Alright, thanks for the quick replies!


I have an Ibook G4 1.2ghz PPC. I think its the later 2004 one before it was discontinued.
I dont do too much on my computer, just use Adium , fire fox and a game (that runs fine)


My iStat says
(Swap) 186mb (256mb) Not sure what this is
46642 pages in
16008 pages out

47mb Wired
137mb active
67mb inactive
5mb free
 
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