Examining the Memory Hogs of iOS

Memory-LogoThe worst thing about the iPhone and iPad also happens to be the best thing. They do too much. It’s easy to assimilate them into our lives, and before long they become indispensable. But, soon we have our whole lives on these devices and they become overloaded.

How do we manage the memory? I’ve been working on this issue for awhile. When my iPhone keeps shutting off on me in the middle of a game, I know it’s because there’s a memory hog somewhere with an app. Here are two ways to examine the memory and keep track of it.
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How to Prevent Windows 7 From Using So Much Memory

windows-taskmgrPicture this: You have a computer with two gigabytes of physical memory, you turn it on, and just after Windows 7 finishes loading, it’s already using about half of all that memory when you look into your task manager (hold “Ctrl + Shift + Esc” on your keyboard to access it quickly). Even if it looks a little scary, don’t panic!

What Gives?

In case you didn’t know, RAM (also known as physical memory), serves the purpose of storing pieces of every program you open. When you type “I’m Superman” into a text box in an open program, whether it’s true or not, each letter fills a space in your physical memory. This space can be deleted once you erase the phrase.
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How to Increase the Memory Limit for 32-bit Applications in Windows 64-bit OS

4gbpatch-win7Most of us are now probably using a 64-bit Microsoft Operating System like Windows 7 x64 or Windows Vista x64, which allows the computer to address more than 3GB of RAM. Did you know, however, that any 32-bit applications you run are still limited to making use of only 2GB of RAM? This includes many games and probably the version of Microsoft Office you have installed, unless you specifically opted to install the 64-bit version.

You might wonder why this is a problem. Well, obviously if your system has more than 2GB of RAM, it’d be great to allow your applications or games to make use of it. Furthermore, some applications actually crash when they hit this limit, or start popping up boxes with out of memory errors. If you work on large excel files (500,000 rows+) then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
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How to Prepare Your Mac For OS X Lion

Apple-lion-image

Apples newest operating system, OS X Lion is expected to come some time in July. Just to tantalize us, Apple has not released a specific date, and that means that you should be ready to go at any time if you want to be the first one in your social circle to have the new OS. So, let’s go about getting your Mac prepared for the new operating system.
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How To Track Applications Resource Usage In Windows 7

resourcemonitor-IconMost of us tend to overlook this, but it is very important to control the resource usage of your applications. When an application misbehaved, it can cause other programs to work erratically. If your system runs out of CPU or memory, the programs has to stop until those resources become available.

Since the first version of Windows, utilities for resource control has evolved. Now Windows 7 comes with 3 programs that can track/control resource usage: Task Manager, Performance Monitor and Resource Monitor. While there are other more advanced application, for example Process Monitor by Sysinternals, it will be worthwhile to first use the pre-built application as it uses less resources and storage space.

In this post I will show you how to use the Resource Monitor to track the resource usage of an application in Windows 7.
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Test Your Flaky Computer’s RAM with Windows Memory Diagnostic

flaky--mainThis is a guest post by Keith

The flaky PC (as it is often referred) is a computer which acts normally most of the time, but occasionally quits active programs, delivers obscure error messages, or restarts entirely. So, what causes flaky PC syndrome? Although there is no single answer, one of the most common causes is due to bad random access memory (RAM for short).
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4 Useful Extensions to Improve Firefox Memory Usage

firefox-sand-logoIt is a known fact that Firefox is a memory monster. It consumes your memory like there is no tomorrow. Load up a few tabs and it starts to slow down (or even crash). This is also the main reason why many people are ditching Firefox for Google Chrome. If you are bothered by this memory issue, but are not able to switch to other browsers because of the heavy dependency on the extensions, here are another 4 extensions that can solve/reduce the memory issue and make you a happy Firefox user (hopefully) again.
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