Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Must-have apps in the System tray?

<< < (14/41) > >>

Hirudin:
I'm not trying to feed the flames or anything. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, I don't think I've ever used a RAM optomizing application.

I don't know how much these RAM program things are, but it would seem that their primary function is to free memory, so other programs can use it... RAM is so cheap these days, I'd say if the program is $30, it would be logical to spend $45 (or maybe more) to get more actual RAM...

app103:
I can see only a few instances where some type of 'memory manager' would be beneficial to me.

I have used a simple one line vbs script that accomplishes the same thing on my P1 (233mhz, 64mb ram) but only before opening extremely heavy applications that take a long time to load...like Paintshop Pro or Delphi. It does shorten the loading time.

I have also used it when I have experienced a connection problem where I get bumped offline and can't reconnect. Running that script seems to help me reconnect and it's a whole lot faster than rebooting for the same effect.

I would never have an application to do this running in the background all the time though, and I would never waste my ram running something that uses more ram than it frees. (which is why I use the script)

Open notepad and copy this to the first line and save it as FreeMem.vbs. Replace the number with what would be correct for the amount of ram you have on your system, making it no higher than 1/3 of your total ram. (if the number is too high, you will get an error message when you try to run it)


--- Code: Visual Basic ---FreeMem = Space(20000000)
When you need it, just click to run it like it was an application. If it opens in notepad when you try to run it, right click the file and select Open. (Some system's security settings make all .vbs files open in notepad instead of running when clicked) If it still opens in notepad, check the file name and make sure it's really .vbs and not .txt.

lanux128:
Open notepad and copy this to the first line and save it as FreeMem.vbs. Replace the number with what would be correct for the amount of ram you have on your system...-app103 (April 17, 2007, 09:58 PM)
--- End quote ---
cool tip, app.. :up: i can sense a Farr alias coming up.. :)

Darwin:
I don't know how much these RAM program things are, but it would seem that their primary function is to free memory, so other programs can use it... RAM is so cheap these days, I'd say if the program is $30, it would be logical to spend $45 (or maybe more) to get more actual RAM...
--- End quote ---

I think their primary function is actually to free MONEY from your wallet ;) Seriously, though, they run from oodles of free and opensource offerings through a range of shareware products that seem to run between $10 and $30 (but I'm sure you can pay much more).

f0dder:
Anyway, here's a process working set size trimmer I wrote.

It's a command-line tool supporting wildcards, so you can do "trimws *" to trim all processes, or "trimws fir*" to trim (among others) firefox. Not that in the "*" case it'll mention a lot of errors, that's because system services are protected (and I'm not doing anything to circumvent that :) ).

I wrote this while looking into trillians "low memory usage", and just upgraded it to have wildcard support.

I still don't think using a tool like this blindly is a good idea, but at least this one is free, comes with source code, is tiny, and is a one-shot thing rather than a stupid bloated keep-running app.

EDIT: attachment removed, see later post for updated version.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page