[HM] Virtual Memory

[Duane Murphy]

--- At Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:14:50 -0800, Jane Sprando wrote:

>When should Virtual memory be turned on?

Since sometime in 8.5, all the time. The default is 1 meg more than your
real RAM. You should also get as much RAM as possible. Prices are dirt
cheap, so fill it up.

The reason to use VM even when you have lots of RAM has to do with the
memory used by applications is used. The code for an application must be
loaded into memory for it to execute. If VM is turned on then the system
can use a feature called memory mapped I/O to make loading the
applications executable code into memory much more efficient and use less
memory. You'll notice a message when you view the Memory panel of the Get
Info window that the application will use more memory if VM is turned off.

So, turn it on, leave it on and forget about it. :-)

 ...Duane