can someone explain to me how ram works?

[MUCKYFINGERS]

alright, so i have 1 gb of ram, and after having my machine on for awhile and multi tasking here and there, i now have only firefox, bittorrent os x, and adium x open, as well as a few widgets. dash monitor says i have 102 M ram wired, 238 M ram active, FIVE HUNDRED SIXTY ONE M ram inactive, and 121 M ram free.

how does this all work, and how cna i free up the inactive ram to free ram? thanks in advance. :)

[grapes911]

There are tons of threads about this. Search for inactive RAM and you'll probably get your answer.

[katie ta achoo]

how stuff works page on RAM (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ram.htm)

Pretty interesting...

Widgets take up huge amounts of RAM. Having a lot open can really slow your computer down.

[MUCKYFINGERS]

ah, okay, i should have known to use the search function.

thanks guys.

[grapes911]

ah, okay, i should have known to use the search function.

thanks guys.

Yeah, I'd explain it, but there many other users have already said it and they'd probably did a better job than I could. :o