DOWNLOADANALOGX MAXMEM
THE HANDY DANDY ANALOGX MAXMEM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you ever wondered why it was that when your first reboot your machine, it
seems to run smoother and faster than it does after it's been running for a
while? This is due in part to programs using system resources (like memory),
and then failing to free it after they exit. The end result of problems like
this is that your system runs slower and slower. Now you can take control of
your computers memory usage, with AnalogX MaxMem!
Before we delve to deeply into how AnalogX MaxMem works, let's just quickly
cover how your computer uses memory; in Windows there are basically two types
of memory: physical and page. Now physical memory is pretty easy to understand,
it's how much RAM you have installed in your computer, so if your system has 64
megs of RAM, that really is just 64 megs of physical memory. The other type,
page memory, is actually a file on your harddrive that the computer can save
physical memory to periodically. As you can probably guess, page memory is not
nearly as fast as physical memory, and that's the reason your computer starts
to run slower. As you run more programs that don't free up resources properly,
they use up more and more physical memory, leaving less and less for other
programs to use. What MaxMem does is forces the system to always have certain
amounts of physical memory available, and ensures that it never drops below that
amount. Also, when your machine is idle for an extended period of time, you
can have MaxMem automatically free up a larger percentage of the system memory;
this is great for servers or other systems that stay up for extended periods of
time.
Operation of AnalogX MaxMem is simple, just select the MaxMem program from the
Start Menu, and you're done - MaxMem will be happily sitting down on your system
tray. The icon on the tray indicates your physical memory utilization for the
last 60 seconds, with the top being 100% of your physical memory being used, and
the bottom being 0% of your memory being used. As the graph gets higher, it will
change from green to yellow, and then finally to red; if you would like a more
detailed idea of how much memory is free, simply hover the mouse over the icon,
and it will show you how many megs of memory is available (and what percentage
of total memory that is).
If you right-click on the icon, you can get configuration information for the
program; this is where you set how much memory you want the program to ensure
is available. There are three percentages it uses; minimum, periodic, and
aggressive. The minimum value is the smallest amount of physical memory that
the system must have available; if it drops below this value, the program will
automatically make sure more physical memory is made available. The periodic
value is only checked after 3 minutes where the memory has remained relatively
untouched; this is to ensure that a workable amount of memory is probably
available to any new programs that need it. Finally, every 30 minutes of idle
memory time triggers the aggressive mode, which is primarily designed to flush
almost everything out of memory that isn't currently being used; a good total
for this is around 70%, but it depends on how much memory you have in your
system.
If you left-click on the icon, you'll see it do a quick sweep, and it will
attempt to increase the amount of free memory by whatever you have configured
as the minimum value; so if you are using the default 5%, and you have 10% of
your system memory free, then clicking on the icon should increase this up to
15% - it's that simple! You can choose to free up larger chunks by selecting
another free size from the Free category in the right-click menu - each value
will increase the amount of free system memory by their given percentage.
For more info, and some MP3 music, make sure to check out the website at:
http://www.analogx.com/
