PowerBook G4 1.5 Memory/resources 99% used with no programs running

[Agent007]

Running 15" PB G4 1.5ghz 512 ram 80gig 4200rpm drive OSX 10.4.8. About 1.5 years old. In the last week, I have noticed memory totally depleted when running one or two programs. I checked, and when I reboot, even with no programs running, i have between 5 and 10 meg of ram free. I have tried removing all icons from the dock and disabling Dashboard, but no luck. Clearly something is up, and I think it might be my hard drive wearing out and forcing the RAM to do more work.

 

[nitynate]

If you dont mind me asking,
Is that 5 to 10 MB's of free memory or is that inactive?

 

[Agent007]

148 MB inactive, 6 MB free, 292 MB active

 

[nitynate]

That actually means, you have 148 MB of ram still available for use in applications.

While this is not much, you still have some. That is OS X's way of memory management. It allows for better multitasking etc.

You may need to consider an upgrade to 1GB or even 1.5GB of ram.

 

[Agent007]

yeah when I get some cash I'll put a gig stick of Crucial in there (110 bucks cheaper than Apple's). Unfortunately, I'm one of the poor souls who got screwed by Apple's bad logic board memory slot, and my serial number isn't in the range of their accepted recall (like so many of us). Therefore the most memory my machine can accept is 1 gig.

 

[WildCowboy]

Don't buy from Crucial...they're overpriced and have sleezy business practices.

Try OWC or DMS...better prices from better companies that know Macs and stand behind their products.