Using 815mb's of RAM with 4 programs open?

[mulletman13]

Hey all

I'm really curious, as when I had my old 1ghz Powerbook with only 768mb RAM... I never used more than 600... and this would be with iTunes, Safari, Photoshop and iChat open.... but as you all can see in this screenshot here :

I'm using significantly more RAM than that... and I'm not running many memory intensive programs.

What I don't get is how the "Real" column doesnt add up to the "Wired" and "Active Memory" totals.

Can anybody explain this? And Ive never noticed widgets taking up RAM before.... does OS X default these to RAM because I have a lot of it?

I'm sorry but this is really confusing me =\

 

[Heb1228]

To put it simply OS X tries to use as much memory as it can. Its a good thing. Don't worry about it.

 

[paperinacup]

Looks like alot of widgets are running.

 

[mulletman13]

Yes about 14 are running on Dashboard, but the weird thing is they never showed up nor used RAM before...

and Heb1228, care to elaborate on how OS X uses as much RAM as it can? Thats very interesting to know, and I never knew about this, but it makes sense.

Thanks!

 

[Heb1228]

and Heb1228, care to elaborate on how OS X uses as much RAM as it can? Thats very interesting to know, and I never knew about this, but it makes sense.

Thanks!

Basically think of it like this... why have the memory if you're not going to use it? The more memory the OS can fill up, the less pageins/pageouts are required to operate, which means better performance. You don't want to have a lot of unused memory just sitting inside your system.

 

[psycho bob]

Lose some widgets and I see your running Java based torrent software which is a real hog. Either close it down when not in use or try different software ie; none Java.

Most of your RAM is inactive so is available but will not be as fast as free memory. Have you had apps open before this shot was taken? Do you sleep your Book thus keeping the RAM contents?