[G5] Lack of Posts

[Zane H. Healy]

At 9:57 AM -0500 1/4/06, Joel Esler wrote:
>I am too.  I think it's a fantastic computer.  However, I have 
>noticed a RAM issue.  I have 2.5 Gs of RAM in my Dual 2.0, and I 
>have noticed that after I boot and start my regular programs, (Mail, 
>iTunes, VPN Client, and Adium.  I have about 1500M free.  However, 
>after running it for a few days, starting a quitting a few programs.
>(Terminal, Entourage, Safari, Firefox..) Right now I am sitting at 
>680M free, basically I have noticed that some RAM is getting caught 
>out there somewhere, any thoughts?

Well, my basic thought on the subject isn't very constructive, and 
that is that Memory Management on Mac OS X *SUCKS*!

Having gotten that out of my system, one thing that I've noticed is 
that Safari basically doesn't release memory, it just keeps steadily 
increasing the amount of RAM that it uses, the longer it's running. 
The only way to totally reclaim that memory is to quit out of Safari.

Another application that I run into issues with is iPhoto, the memory 
requirements for it can be downright *insane*!  iPhoto is the reason 
that I upgraded my Dual 2Ghz from 1.5GB to 3.5GB of RAM.  Prior to 
upgrading the RAM, it had reached the point where starting iPhoto 
would cripple, if not totally lock up my system (to the point where 
it had to be powered off, as it was totally unresponsive).

I think there are a few other programs that are also guilty of using 
steadily more RAM, but Safari is the main one I've noticed.  On an 
interesting note, I've also noticed that the longer that MS Word '04 
is running, the more CPU it seems to use.

The irritating thing for me is that I expect to start a computer, log 
in, fire up the programs I use and leave everything running till the 
next power outage, unless I have to reboot for patches.  I have other 
systems that stay up for well over a year if allowed to, but with Mac 
OS X, I'm actually doing good to have the system up for as long as I 
used to keep my G4/450 AGP (it was part of the first shipment of G4's 
to dealers) running Mac OS 9 up.

BTW, logging out is as unacceptable as having to reboot the system.

		Zane


-- 
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| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet)           | Classic Computer Collector |
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