Some of us aren’t lucky enough to have brand new computer
systems that are loaded with memory and bells and whistles. Plus, many software
programs are RAM memory guzzlers, and they don’t “release” that
memory when the program is closed. That means that your system is unable to
recover that memory and use it with other programs.
When this happens, you get “low memory” messages, or
your system may even crash, causing you to lose everything that hasn’t
been saved up until that point.
Though this article isn’t a lesson in memory, let me
explain in a very simplistic way what RAM (Random Access Memory) is, and why
it’s so important to a computer system. Every time you turn on your
computer, launch a program, or open a file, the program or data is loaded into
RAM. If your computer system has a lot of RAM, you can open more files or
programs at once and load bigger files or programs onto your system.
So, RAM is the temporary memory that is required to run your
software programs. When you click the “save” button on your system to
save a piece of work, you’re now using your long-term storage, or hard
drive’s, memory, which is a totally different memory. Information saved to
your hard drive is available to you when you turn off your machine and start it
again. It’s “permanent.” RAM, on the other hand, is short-term
memory, and when your computer shuts down, you lose everything in the RAM.
So, you can see that if you don’t have enough RAM on your
system, your software programs won’t operate like they should. As newer
software programs are being developed, they seem to use more and more RAM,
which makes it even more difficult for your computer to operate efficiently if
you don’t have a lot of RAM.
Now that we’ve had our mini lesson in RAM, I’ve found
a really neat and inexpensive software program that helps solve your RAM memory
problems: MemTurbo II. It will scour your
system for memory leaks, or memory that wasn’t released when a software
program was shut down.
It operates in the background to where you don’t even know
it’s there. You’ll just see a little green “bar” that
indicates the amount of available RAM on your system at that time. Every 15
minutes, the program automatically recovers RAM, or whenever your RAM gets
below a certain level.
You can even do a “deep scrub” that will find RAM that
may not be picked up through a regular recover. I just performed a deep scrub
on my system, and it recovered 64 MB of RAM.
MemTurbo II only costs $19.95, which is a bargain for what this
little program does. You can even download a trial version of the program and
use it free for 30 days.
For me, MemTurbo is a “must have” program, because it
helps my computer operate more efficiently and saves me a lot of headaches (and
sanity). Visit the MemTurbo site for more
information
Robin Nobles is the Director of Training for the
Academy of Web Specialists,
where she has taught several thousand students in her
online search engine marketing
courses during the past several years. She is also the content provider for
GRSeo (Search Engine Optimizer)
software. Her latest books, Web Site Analysis and Reporting and
Streetwise Maximize Web Site Traffic, can be ordered through
Amazon. For onsite training
by Robin Nobles and John Alexander, visit
Search Engine
Workshops.
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