Free Memory Drops From 1.40GB --> 1.08GB...after couple of hours...WHY?

[shuweiyu16]

I have 2Gigs of RAM on my blackbook, when I boot up my mac in the morning it starts off with 1.40GB of RAM then in a couple of hours it drops to 1.08 GB of RAM...while no programs are running or anything...is this normal?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Papajohn56]

I have 2Gigs of RAM on my blackbook, when I boot up my mac in the morning it starts off with 1.40GB of RAM then in a couple of hours it drops to 1.08 GB of RAM...while no programs are running or anything...is this normal?
Thanks in advance.

Background processes, like indexing files for Spotlight, probably.

 

[iW00t]

You have a PhD in computer science or something?

Why does it bother you?

The kernel uses free memory as it requires for the purposes of caching data from the disk... I rather have 0 bytes of free memory and a very efficient computer than having every last bit of my memory used stringently and sitting there idle.

 

[dusanv]

You tell him iW00t!

Seriously, open the Activity Monitor app (/Applications/Utilities), sort by real memory usage and see what's leaking the memory. I suspect it's Safari that's eating the memory. Cure: switch to FireFox or Camino or restart Safari every once in a while.

 

[miniConvert]

And what does your Inactive RAM start at and end up at?

 

[iW00t]

I won't worry too much about it really, I have been getting awesome uptimes way beyond what people get on Windows, and if there are any leaking applications I am just not noticing it.

Then again I upped my memory to 4gb recently