low Free Memory available. should i be worried?

[daniel huxtable]

it says i only have 37mb available of Free Memory. i only have Firefox, iTunes, and transmission opened up right now. i checked to see what processes were taking up most of my memory and this is what popped up:

im still getting used to the whole iMac experience so excuse my naiveness. theres like a second or two delay with certain actions such as playing a song in itunes. is it time for memory or is there a problem?

 

[iPhil]

Free: is well free ram that's not used by the OS right now..


Wired: is amount ram required now for OS..

Active is Swap Amount of ram for OS ..

Inactive: is again free Ram




edit: See Here for How to Read Ram in Mac OS X..

 

[bluedoggiant]

Free: is well free ram that's not used by the OS right now..


Wired: is amount ram required now for OS..

Active is Swap Amount of ram for OS ..

Inactive: is again free Ram




edit: See Here for How to Read Ram in Mac OS X..

then what's the difference between free and inactive?

 

[iPhil]

then what's the difference between free and inactive?

Free memory: This memory is not being used.



Inactive memory: This information is no longer being used and has been cached to disk, but it will remain in RAM until another application needs the space. Leaving this information in RAM is to your advantage if you (or a client of your computer) come back to it later.

 

[Leon Kowalski]

then what's the difference between free and inactive?

Inactive memory is no longer in use, but the OS "remembers" what the
memory contains (i.e., which disk sectors were last loaded). If/when an
app asks to read that data from disk, the OS can deliver it immediately,
without actually hitting the disk. That eliminates unnecessary page-ins.

Other than that, it's treated exactly the same as "free" memory.

LK

 

[daniel huxtable]

so everything is a-ok?

thanks for all of your responses. i love this forum.