waste of memory

Well, not to diss a freebie, but, I'm sticking with MemTurbo. It's better all around and you can scrub memory while programs are still running.

Now, I use FreeRam XP Pro, which I got for free and which is quite useful as I play a lot of memory-sucking games that have, in the past, crashed (Sims 2 anyone?). I have that thing plugged in, if my games are about to go into suck-mode, it stops them and frees up RAM to keep it going, and I go about my business with only a brief slow-down. 99% of the time it doesn't do anything else because I don't always play memory sucking games. Occasionally it's very useful for discovering that a new game I installed, or some other program, is sucking up all the memory and has a problem with it, so I can either make adjustments or remove the program in question.

For free, I'd go with it. It's easy to use and very low-key, not using much memory at all (I checked in my Task Manager, it barely breaks 1K and is one of the two lowest memory-using programs I have).

These so-called "professional" versions of these things are a joke. I won't buy one, and I won't download one for free even, because they're a rip-off, even if they don't cost anything. I'll take a nice, simple program that doesn't affect my computer much. And I know these professional programs stink because I used to use one, and it was worthless, not to mention whenever I needed to "upgrade" the program it cost me all over again. No thanks.

Stick with a nice, small freeware version that doesn't wipe out your memory and that is useful only when you need it.

#8, Robin

The offer appears on the server at the exact same instant for everyone. The time zone has nothing to do with the post - only the time that you see it posted.

A mistake made here a number of times.

#55 Alan and #62 Jay - Thanks Guys!!

#78 Thank you for the stupid and pointless rant. Anyone with an hour to waste typing something like that..on a site like this... needs to go rent a life. I know lots of folks who work for Microsoft and you know what.... they're pretty darned happy.

why me need this when good softwares are on the internets for already?

Nos. 12, 24, 41, 42, and 45 mention free programs that do about the same thing as the giveaway. To these one could add the free Rambooster and Rampage:

http://www.sci.fi/~borg/rambooster/
http://www.jfitz.com/software/RAMpage/

I think Rambooster may be the Grandaddy of such programs.

The author of Rampage makes useful (and often surprisingly pessimistic) comments about the uses and misuses of "optimizer" programs: "... if you believe a memory freeing tool is useful, you may as well use a small, efficient, free one," namely his. He doesn't use one.

I do NOT believe that such "optimizers" speed up a computer. However I think these are legitimate uses:

1)When free RAM gets low enough to maybe cause a crash I nudge it upward to a safe level.
2)Every once in a while I free up as much RAM as I can, to get rid of accumulated leftover program crud. Whether or not there is such crud, this can't hurt. My Windows XP is supposed to manage memory properly, but I don't trust Redmond as much as some people do.

Rambooster displays the amount of Free RAM. This first alerted me to the whole issue of Free RAM problems.

" Windows 95, 98, ME and NT 4 are no longer supported by this program." Well let's not let it run on the operating systems that may see the biggest benefit! Duhhh....

This no longer supports "Win95, Win98, ME and NT4" it informed me when I tried to install it on my trusty old <512MB laptop, which I still run Win98 on so I can offer tech support to my friends who still use it. I'll stick with MaxMem from AnalogX.

My experience with mem optimizers over the last 20+ years that I've been working with computers is that SOME work for SOME computers under SOME circumstances, but NONE of them work for EVERY computer ALL the time.

The basic principle of most of them focuses on two steps; freeing up RAM when programs don't unload from memory, and making large contiguous blocks of memory available to applications. Most optimizers that I've tried do those well enough, but the various combinations of programs a user might run at different times precludes most of them from applying any kind of "one size fits all" approach successfully in every case.

So what's the solution? An "on demand" optimizer will probably give the most users some satisfaction when properly used, whereas one that runs and optimizes all the time will eventually bog your machine down, at least some of the time, rather than making it faster.

Before you give a blanket condemnation of ALL memory optimizers, remember that none of them can work well under all possible hardware/software combinations; so try this program if you don't have gigs of memory to waste, but don't expect more than modest results under the best circumstances, and expect some slowdowns under most others.

For US$23.08 (RM75 in Malaysia), I can get a 1GB Kingston DDR2 800MHz RAM stick at the neighborhood PC shop. The same model is US$24.99 on tiger-direct, not including delivery charges (yeah, Malaysia is a cheap PC country - even Vista Home Premium is only around US$100 as opposed to US$259.95 at Microsoft.com). So, US$19.95 is not a good investment for improving available RAM.

My machine has 3GB of RAM and I'm struggling to run as many background programs I can think of (even Yahoo! Widgets) to use it up. I still have 2GB free all the time... I've used this program before. Not useful... except to fill up that excess RAM a bit more.

These type of programs actually do work. I run a computer at work with 1 gb of memory and a program that uses lots of memory; I've seen the program using 400 megs of memory in the task manager. If I input and process several large jobs, the computer slows down to almost a standstill. The screen freezes 5 or more seconds after entering. I have seen free memory being below 25 megs and sometimes at 0 megs. After loading a program of this type and freeing 256 megs of memory, the computer speeds up tremendously. I could also reboot but sometimes it's not possible since the computer program is also used by machinery in a different part of the building.
The computer is a Pentium 4 2.4 ghz and runs kind of sluggish using the program even after bootup.

To #11 Ken... Just what in heaven's name makes you think anyone would heed YOUR advice? You give us a moronic statement every day. Now it's become advice?
Well, a correction there. "I would advise not to download this program. It will gain you nothing and may cause you problems" hardly counts as advice - nor even useful - despite the immense amount of thought you put into it.
Hey, why not actually download something and comment on it then?

I use a program called meminfo on my computer, It has a ram optimizer in it, but I use it because I get curious as to how much RAM I have free. (It puts a icon on your taskbar telling you how much RAM is free)

for anyone looking for cheap ddr go to tigerdirect.com or newegg.com
i run 400mhz ddr and have found that it has gotten cheaper. i think i got my last 1gig stick for $30(usd). oddly, if you have a newer machine you can get 2gigs of 800mhz for $20. just make sure your mb will support what you put in it. i have 3 ddr slots on this mb, but only support for 2 slots of 400mhz (which explains why the 3rd stick i added caused problems), my mb will support all 3 slots if i drop down to 333mhz ram though.
and thanks to everyone that shared some knowledge here. i thought about installing one of these ram progs, but will just stick w/ this fresh xp install and hope 1.5gigs of ram will keep things running fairly smooth. fingers crossed as it is windows and that where the problems seem to start.

I guess people don't understand the use of this type of programs. I use Firefox instead of IE and it is a memory hog. I use a software called SweepRam, there is also another one called Cleanmem that is similar. The new memory software approach is clever. They don't reside in memory. So they do not slow down anything. When you run this software it request to all the programs running to release memory. When they finished then they stop. They don't stay in memory.

@ Phil, please, do not invent new terms that only you and you alone uses. That's confusing!

In short; if the "you" in "RAM holds things in reserve until you need them" refers to the CPU, then yes, its technically correct. But from the point of view of a "non-tech", it's just confusing.

If you refered to a user, its just plain wrong. RAM holds things the computer uses then and there.

Harddrives and other non-volatile memory on the other hand, DOES hold "things in reserve until you need them". Unless as virtual memory, but thats an exception we're not discussing.

As a professional who was in the business back in the days when mickeysoft was ust a bad joke to the rest of the computer world...it still is. Every OS they make is bloated and slow and they are all very bad when it comes to a decent method for memory management. Oddly enough many of the programs that are the worst about freeing up memory when they close are FROM Microsoft. I realise that in many cases it is a matter of common programing libraries (DLLS and OCXs to the microsoft crowd) being left around for other programs to use them (just in case). But honestly, the methods employed in most version of the windows os ARE REALLY BAD when it comes to keeping your memory in good orderm especially if you use a lot of different programs and you leave your machine on a lot.

I also feel that it is important to way that not everybody in the world is using new tech. They can't afford to buy a new machine every two years (or less), so they try and get by with the machine that they they have - because they have other concerns in life, life feeding their kids, paying the mortgage, etc. Bying a new PC isn't high on the list.

Also it does not fix the "memory leak" problem in an OS to just "go by a few gig more". That is like trying to keep a leaky boat from sinking by getting a bigger leaky boat. It will still sink given enough time.

The thing I really hate about microsofts development methods (as a person who grew up in the area and was doing optimized assembly code while Bull Gates was still struggling to understand the uses and purpose of soap) is that their method of development is horrible. The best book for creating a good development environment used them as the bad example (Debugging the Development Process). Their method involves letting the people in middle managment (none of whome understand what good programming skill ARE) carve the company into little waring kingdoms and fight it out for dominance, and then have the untalented warlords go out and hire a huge number of new college graduates, most of whom are really crappy at their job...and a very small number of talented people to try and fix the messes they create.

You see, to the new college graduate, Microsoft (and Intel) is the place you work until you have enough work experience to go to work for a REAL company. One that treats its employees well (instead of creating an internal culture that forces people to chose between their family and their job). This causes a problem. They have problems keeping their best people. Their OSs are always created by those who cannot manage to get hired away. Instead of using less than 50 really good programers (like other development firms) to design and create an OS release, they use a huge number (thousands at times) of crappy ones and let the users debug their code for them.

After all, Gates said it himself. Microsoft is not a software company. It is a marketing company. They are very good at being what they are. Unfortunatly software development is not it.

This is why there are so many people in other companies that make a very good living making "work arounds" to fix their problems. It is also why none of the serious places that I worked every used a Microsoft product for anything that needed to be secure, or dependable.

#35 and #38: Phil

Windows can use extra memory to cache disk operations. It may look like all the memory is being used, but much of it is cache that can be freed almost instantly if needed by another process. That's what I was referring to by "every last byte". If it's not being used, then it's being wasted.

Windows uses the paging file as a last resort. It's thousands of times slower than using RAM. Forcing Windows to page out will slow the system down until the actively used pages are loaded back into memory. You might want to do some research on page faults to understand how it works.

What's wrong with leaving programs in RAM if there are no other processes that need the memory? Windows will be able to load them quicker next time because there is no disk I/O. That's the point of caching.

Of course some companies know more than MS, but not the ones selling $20 memory optimizers for Windows. If it was so easy to do a better job managing memory they (MS) would buy one of these companies and incorporate the features in Windows.

Your comments above make it clear that you don't understand what RAM is, let alone how paging works in Windows. I don't think you are in any position to comment on Mark's paper technically. He is an authority on Windows programming and was so well before he joined Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft didn't offer him a job, they bought his company. Let me know when Microsoft is offering you a few million to get you onboard.

COST OF RAM??? For those of you who have "never" seen rem at $20/GB, I dont know what to tell you. DDR2 is available at this price after rebates / discounts ALL THE TIME. DDR is more expensive I will agree

For those of you running the 486 / P3 with the 256MB of ram you seriously need to upgrade. Your system is SO obsolete I cant belive your dial up allows you to get on this web page.

I frequently do MIR deals and have purchased modern mobo's for as little as $40 with some stout specs. You can get ECS boards weekly for less than this, Throw in a low end (but modern architecture) chip for $40, abd the $20 ram and for less than $100 you can have a somewhat decent rig. Go to Fatwall@t or Slickde@ls and look for the deals to come. They are plentiful. THERE IS NO EXCUSE for having 256mb of RAM. Optimizers were obsolete 10 years ago, as well as the systems they were designed for

this is a very good program for those of us whose computers cant support more than 1Gb of ram, i only have 512 (i kinda want to upgrade) but i want a new computer, very good program though!

@# 73 Randall Staggers
I think #1 was posting about the thumbs up or down voting at the top, not the yes or no voting on each others posting. Sometimes people vote on that before anyone has a chance to try it out and post a comment.

#1
The voting is when people vote on a comment and has nothing to do with the software itself only if the comment was found useful or not.

This is a very deceptive way of rating a program.

Beaver:

I have never seen 2gb of ram for 20.00 however, Newegg was having a sale a week ago @ 1gb for 29.00.

Since it wasn't for my machine, I didn't buy any. I did however buy 2gb of 184 pin Non-Ecc ram from www.shop.kingston.com for 68.00 shipped. They ship for free, three day FedEx.



As for the program in question, I didn't find it did anything for me the first time I downloaded it.
Thanks for the free software, but this one is a thumbs down.

#68, I've been using this site almost since it's inception. None of the programs have viruses and it's trustworthy in the sense that developers bring their programs here. Some of the programs come back 6 months or more later, but not usually. As far as "damaging' your oomputer, it's most likely that you will do that by your own hand through a lack of understanding on how strong some of these programs can be. My suggestion is to install what you want but pay close attention to the pitfalls other people post in their comments before you start freely using the program. I've wiped out menu's and deleted key files from being too overzealous in my use of a new cleaner or optimizer.

Downloaded it and installed it. There is no way to give any opinions unless I use it for several days. I am not so intelligent as to evaluate a program in just a few hours.

@ #3- I'd like to know where you get 2gb of memory for $20! I've saw 1gb for $70. Would love to know where you get yours!

I am new to this website and was excited to find it. It is nice to find a site that offers free software to those who may not otherwise be able to afford it.

I am not a computer guru who knows the ins and outs of the systems so I do read the comments provided, although they leave me a bit apprehensive. Has this site ever offered software that has damaged someone's system? Has this site ever offered software that is favored by the majority of the users? After the initial offer, is it gone forever or does it come back around later?

Renegade,

Happen to notice although the Editor's review is 5-star that actual user reviews are only 1.5 stars?

"Volatile Reserve Access" Phil , "forum" Renegade and many others : it truly isn't worth it's money on any machine that was bought or upgraded since the Millenium. It even has a very limited effect on older machines and in fact can be the cause of slower access and more RAM usage that not using it. Don't take my word for it but investigate the subject with an open mind and logic reasoning.

Oh btw Phil. I have been using/programming/fixing computers since 1981 and I have NEVER ever heard it being described as Reserve or Volatile access memory. If someone doesn't understand random access then frankly they probably will understand volatile or reserved access even less, especially if they are not native English speakers.

#64 now that is a helpful post. An unbiased opinion from a respected web site.

I read it and you are right they raved about it. Unfortunately if you look at the user reviews (of which there were 5) they all gave it 1 star, then hammered it with their comments.

Tough to find an accurate representation of any software these days.

Thanks though for the link.

Thanks also to GOTD for continuing to provide free software.

Can you imagine if we loved each and every piece of software offered here. Where would you put 365 programs a year.

I bought 2 gigs of DDR2 for $57 USD last night at Best Buy

here's the link: http://tinyurl.com/5dpboc

Or if you don't mind the wait, you can order on line for $39 USD here:
http://tinyurl.com/68ewux

In case anyone is interested and for whatever it's worth, the c\net editors loved this program, 5 star. Try not to let old biases get in the way or you might end up cutting yourselves short. I say that from experience only now I'm more mindfull of it. Here's the link to the review.

http://www.download.com/MemOptimizer/3000-2086_4-10296814.html

*[This web site has forums and I know how to use them, do you?]

# 19 George:
Try Tigerdirect.com, or e-cost.com, they often have specials like this. They're "come-on's", or "loss leader's", to get you to their site, in the hopes you will buy more from their sites once you're there... but you don't have to.
Hope this helps, Lloyd

@49 (Jim): This is because windows doesn't release the lock on a file at times. Try "Unlocker" and unlock the file with it when you need to backup it (another solution, though cumbersome) would be to reboot the system (and don't have your Outlook running at system start...), the link to Unlocker's main page is:

Unlocker

Correction: My last statement was for #48 about the "Ocean".

# 47 and #48 if you'll notice my post at #46 I explained why I used Reserved Access Memory instead of its proper tem of Random Access Memory. I do this so non techs understand that RAM holds things in reserve until you need them. Volitol memory is another less used but just as correct in its meaning. And #47 I could care less about your faith in me because I'm here to help those with less understanding of computers and how they work instead of pleasing you. Have a nice day.

#35 you know as well as I do some older system can't handle too much "Ocean" or RAM because the bus speed and processor regulates it.

for 20 bucks u cant buy ram

for 40 bucks u can buy 1 GB SDRAM DDR2

I don't care if Albert Einstein rises from the grave and co-authors a paper with Steven Hawking titled "Memory Optimizers Can't Work No-how!" my experience tells me otherwise.

My 256MB W2K desktop begins to slow down every week or so, and I can see the free memory is minimal. If I do nothing it just gets worse, despite the claims of some here that "Microsoft would use this idea if it really worked." I only have to manually trigger the tray icon for the Systweak Memory Zipper Plus utility and the problem is solved in less than a minute.

Best thing I ever bought that was made in India, and it's been running great for nearly 7 years.

Once I find a place to stay and move out from under that bridge I plan to hook up my computer. It's a Pentium 90 with a 120 mb hard drive. The size of the program being 1 mg will really help out.I also have 8 megs of ram in the system. This program will help out when I'm shopping the online liquor stores for booze. Thanks GOTD. This really made my day.

It is quite a heated debate we have today. But the pessimist party won, I'll pass on this one. Still, thank you for your offerings GAOTD. You are addictive.

Jim (#49) - what you need is an application that tells you what files are in use, and what program or processes has them in use then allows you to kill those processes. I use a little freeware program called OpenedFilesView by Nir Sofer - http://www.nirsoft.net

Just be careful about what processes you kill, you could inadvertently kill an OS related process which might bring your PC down and require a reboot to recover.

Another note to my post above was that this program can be shut down and your computer stays at the same memory setting, but unless you have this program set to run on startup you will have to run it once to reclaim what results you got before you shut the computer off. It will go back to the memory setting before you ever used this program.

Phil (#46) Random and reserve are not at all synonymous in computer terms. Reserve is more like swap, something that has not been used in some time may not be used again any time soon, so you allocate swap (on disk) and move some contents from high speed memory to swap just in case you need it, and it sits waiting until you look for it again. Random access memory is potentially in use ALL the time. Volatile is a not synonymous either - RAM can be, and for most of us is volatile, which means when you power the computer off the contents of memory are lost. You also get NV-RAM - Non Volatile Random Access Memory which, like a USB flash drive or Secure Digital or any other memory card does not require a constant power supply to "remember" the contents of the memory like RAM in a typical computer. Hibernate on a portable computer is kind of like NV-RAM, but not really. In most simplistic description, the contents of the running OS and apps are written to disk so that when you power back on, the state ate time of hibernation is restored.

For best performance, you want to avoid swap/paging at all costs, which is why we are adding more and more meory to computers these days as Windows and the apps themselves have become so bloated and require so much memory.

Maybe you have never done any programming, I have. Random access means a chunk of memory can be accessed randomly as opposed to sequentially. The operating system does not have to read from beginning to end searching for what it needs which would be inefficient sequential access, like reading from a tape - whether a computer backup or video attached to your TV. Random access means the OS simply jumps to "random" parts of memory whose actual addresses are know to the program using it because the program declares variables at startup (or during runtime) that the OS then allocates to pieces of memory. Yes, Windows does include some amount of "garbage collection", as do many programs, that try to free up and optimize memory after applications end, or after a piece of memory is released, but not all garbage collection is equal. Java is a notorious memory hog.

Just as defragmenting a disk can help improve performance, defragmenting or optimizing memory can, but does not always help application performance. This is why it is such a controversial issue, and people like Mark Russinovich and others write papers on the topic, and progrms to help check and optimize system performance in not just memory, but other areas. If memory has become so fragmented through appplications creating and releasing variables, when another application tries to allocate memory for some variable if a big enough chunk is not available, the OS spends time trying to find a big enough chunk and then does some paging/swapping to disk which takes time, or allocates fragmented chunks if possible. Fragmented chunks take longer to access. Yes, it is random access memory, yes it is fast, but if you had only small spaces in your filing cabinet to store papers so you had to start separating related documents to store in different drawers, it would take you longer to find and put them all back together when you needed them. The OS and the application run much faster, but they also need to find and reassemble the parts when they are fragmented. The value of a continuously running defragmenter is highly debatable, and may even at times degrade performance because time is spent moving "stuff" in memory to make it contiguous for the sake of optimization. The value of an on-demand defragmenter is also debatable, but it can often be clearly seen by those of us using computers all day every day for serious business use, when you have two or three large applications running continuously, such as email (e.g. Lotus Notes) with large volumes of emails and internal databases, a web browser such as Firefox with 6 or 7 tabs open simultaneously, some being updated every 30 seconds, CAD applications, opening and closing large spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations. Memory becomes fragmented quickly, and applications start slowing as they look for available memory to fill your work needs down until you reboot or defragment the memory.

With a total of 1011MB (1GB) of ram and using the memory monitor of my AutoStart and Process Viewer (APV) software in the background to test this Giveaway. First with a fresh restart of the computer I get an idle reading of 511 MB used memory after it loads all the programs that I only allow to start. With a 51% usage average I figured, oh what the heck I’ll try this.

It installed and auto registered nicely with no problems.
I was met with an interface looking at the tab “Overview” page showing me a small monitor for my CPU usage in percentages and a bigger monitor with a scrolling graph with a line to measure the memory. Both APV and MemoryOptimizer gave the same readings running side by side.
I then checked out the other tabs on the interface. The registered info will be in the “About” tab.
“Program” tab for program or document preferences
“Processes” tab that gives this program a task manager look. It lists all the programs running on the desktop and in the background. You can end or kill process here.
“Options” tab, “General” sub-tab you can fine tweak how you want to have this software run with a “Hotkeys” setup sub-tab.
There is also a “Support/Update” sub-tab here. Why they put it here under the Options tab is kind of strange when it would have made more sense making it as a sub-tab inside the “About” tab
“Statistics” tab has 2 sub-tabs, Memory/ CPU and is just a break down of the “Overview” tab.
“Optimization” tab is the work horse page. Here is where the magic buttons sit 2 sub-tabs 1 for Memory and the other for CPU.

Tested only the memory optimize first. With a reading of using 511 MBs I set the optimizer’s “Amount to free” slider to a setting of 402 MBs to free to see what results I would get.
Clicked on the “Optimize” button and watched the monitor in my APV program jump up to a use of a peak 1006 mb. Talk about a program using a lot of memory. A scale appears to show the progress of the software performing its job and finished its task in about 10 seconds.

The results: Both APV and MemOptimizer gave the same reading of 309 MBs of memory usage giving me an added 202 extra MBs of memory. Where I first had a reading of 51% used memory is now down to 30% used. (APV reads 29% when I shut down MemOptimizer, it seems to use only 1-2% memory running in the background.)
Now comes the questions, did this program really reclaim all that memory?
Is it just fooling the computer into thinking it did?
Is it restraining the programs running in the background?
As far as the result of loading programs faster or is it all bark and no bite, I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Opening a few programs, some that have a taste for a lot of memory, I didn’t see any difference in the program opening slow or fast. Which probably is an indication that using up about half a GB of memory isn’t all that bad with a 1 GB limit? Maybe if I hade 2/3 of my memory used up I would be able to tell if this program is the real deal. If some one on this post has a computer with lower memory stats (i.e. 512 MB with close to 350-400 MB used) and actually tries this program, lets us know your results.
IMHO, upgrading, getting more real memory is still a better route then to rely on any program. If you can’t afford the upgrade at the moment then try this, it’s free for today and if it helps, again let us know.
No sense for me to try the CPU Optimizer, the only program that uses a lot of CPU and heats it up is DVDShrink, and that I won’t mess with.

One bug I came across was that the "Help" button doesn't work.

Windows MCE XP Pro SP2
Pentium D830 Duel Core 3000 MHz
1 GB Ram

I agree with most here. It's probably not relevant on a "modern" machine. If you have Windows Vista, spend your $20 on a 2gb or 4gb memory stick and use that for extra memory. On XP, just go buy more memory and install it.

I was thinking that this app might help with a problem i am having with Outlook 2007. Even if I close Outlook it does not release the .pst file so i am not able to back it up.

I guess I should try it and see but the negative comments above have made me nervous.

Any advice from the GAOTD menmbers?

Jim

#35: Your lecture on why everyone else was wrong would have been more useful had you not managed to incorrectly define what RAM stands for. If you can't even get that right, I don't have much faith in anything else you have to say.

# 35 You are right in calling it Random Access Memory, though Reserve Access memory and Volitle are synominous with its description. I use it ( Reserve) because it technically holds things in reserve until they're called upon so others can better understand what I'm saying. Thanks for the correction though.

Advanced Windows Care does the same and it's free.
http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html?Str=download

I run this on windows 2000 and yes, it DOES work. I frequently have so much going that windows has turned into a snail stuck in molasseses on a cold day. At those times I run this to release all the memory that doesn't need to be in use instead of rebooting. Works very well.