MEMORY CLEANER FOR MAC FREE
Even with a lot of apps running, I almost always have at least 1 GB of free memory (so I would probably have been happy with 2 GB of RAM – still, better safe than sorry), but it’s nice to know that if I should get close to capacity, I still have the option of running Memory Cleaner to free up a bit more RAM.
MEMORY CLEANER FOR MAC UPGRADE
Needless to say, when I could afford it, I bought a 3 GB memory upgrade from Other World Computing, and my Mac mini has never been happier. If you are short on memory, it can be a good stop gap until you can afford an upgrade. You are better off installing more memory, but that will cost a lot more than the $5.99 price of Memory Cleaner. Memory Cleaner will let you wring the most out of your Intel Mac and can really help in low memory situations. And if you run a lot of apps (I usually have Mail, NetNewsWire, TextWrangler, TextSoap, Spam Sieve, Camino, and at least one other browser – Safari, Firefox, or Chrome – running, and I’m often using Photoshop Elements 3.0 and/or BlueGriffon as well), you’ll want even more. With Snow Leopard, 1.5 GB gives you a bit of breathing room, but 2 GB is much better. With Leopard, your Intel-based Mac should have at least 1.5 GB of system memory to allow for running several programs simultaneously. Memory Cleaner can make a 1 GB Mac with OS X 10.5 Leopard more useful and squeeze a bit more out of a 1 GB OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Mac, but that’s only a stopgap. Running it a third time often adds a bit more, but there’s no real benefit from running it four or more times in a row. If you run Memory Cleaner twice in a row, it will find even more free memory.Hands off while it frees up that extra memory. You should not be doing any work on your Mac while Memory Cleaner does its thing.I speculate that it may also move some data from RAM to virtual memory. It finds system memory that has been set aside but isn’t being used and makes it available. I don’t know how Memory Cleaner does its magic, but it does work. Memory Cleaner can more than double available system memory on a 1 GB Mac running Snow Leopard! I still didn’t have enough RAM to do any significant multitasking, but 250 MB of available system memory beats 100 MB any day. Even a single app required virtual memory, making it a very poor production machine. With OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard running, things were even worse with less than 100 MB free at startup. (That list includes Dropbox, SpamSieve, MagiCal, Growl, TextSoap, smcFanControl, Default Folder X, Teleport, Sidenote, and Logitech Control Center.) If I ran two or three programs, I was making heavy use of virtual memory, especially if I ran two or more browsers. When I used OS X 10.5 Leopard, I had “only” 374 MB available for applications once all my login items loaded. When I bought my Mini, it had just 1 GB of RAM, and the Intel GMA 950 graphics uses 80 MB of that. Memory Cleaner is an app designed to make more system memory available and thus speed up your Mac by reducing dependence on slow virtual memory. I’ve been using Memory Cleaner on my 2007 Mac mini for quite a while now, and it’s about time I reported my results.
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