All I have open is 5 tabs in safari and app store open and all I have left is 1.65gb free ram. Does this sound normal?
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4gb already seems like it wont be enough
- Thread starter MacChinoNyc
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Use Firefox. I have an old 17" MBP and I just added 6GB replacing the 2GB I used to have and everything runs great! The browsers load way faster.
Are you running ML or Mavericks? I thought it was supposed to be managed better with Mavericks. I'm still on ML as I'm new to this and want to try ML before upgrading.
I will try that and monitor.
Don't pay attention to that.
The relevant piece of information is PAGE OUT. As long as this number stays low, ur fine.
I am looking at activiy monitor and I'm down to 1.14gb free ram :0
Is there another tool like activity manager that is free?
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Page ins is at 256mb and page outs is at 0 bytes?
Then you are fine. Repeating myself.
Of course you can always force it to be not fine, like doubling the number of browser tabs and leave all apps open and never close them. OSX doesn't close apps until you explicitly tell it to.
If you want explanation of all the terms in the activity monitor, I suggest Google.
I'm also worried about if 4GB will be enough but my local store doesn't stock the 8GB option in anything apart from the fully upgraded one. I7, 8GB and 512 ssd. It's way more than I'm looking to pay at, any opinions from owners with 4 and 8gb about how it runs
Don't look at things you don't understand! If you knew what that stuff meant you wouldn't be worried about it.
Any operating system that's smart is going to 'use' RAM for disk cache etc. It will also release it when another app wants it.
I've been a strong proponent of getting lots of RAM whenever possible, and even I'm going to tell you: relax. Is your Mac Book Air slowing down? Crashing? No? Then everything is fine.
Maybe, but have you considered that every management tool you load up takes up RAM and resources? You're just going to add fuel to your imaginary fire, and have even LESS RAM available... all while this new utility helps you freak out over how much less RAM you have because you're running it.
I've actually had to troubleshoot "low memory" issues with people who had all kinda of activity monitoring.graphing programs running. Those systems were doing more work (and taking up more resources) telling the user what its status was, than doing actual, useful work. They didn't need more RAM or disk space... they needed to quit those apps, delete them, and stop worrying.
1.25GB is more than sufficient free space. You will be okay, and so will your Mac.
Yup, you're fine. Don't worry about it. Stop staring at your activity monitor and enjoy your Mac.
You have more than 25% of your ram free. Don't sweat it. Just use your Air and enjoy it.
So you're saying just stick with the 4gb and don't think of spending $200+ on returning and upgrading? Its not crashing but I notice occasional beach balls in safari and it actually crashed twice. I'm still on mountain lion as I wanted to get used to before upgrading to mavericks since I'm still new to macs. Should I just upgrade to mavericks or keep testing out mountain lion?
That depends. Do you see yourself increasing or drastically changing your usage habits in the near future? How long do you plan on keeping this Mac?
I wasn't aware that you were still within your return window. If you have the means to return it now and spend the extra cash for more RAM, and it will give you piece of mind to do this, then maybe that is something you should do.
Definitely upgrade to Mavericks. A key change in Mavericks is how it manages memory, which is right up your alley. Such a change will very likely benefit you.
Just one word of warning: Don't freak out if you find that Mavericks is using ALL of your RAM. That's what's it's designed to do. I have an iMac with 32GB of RAM, and Mavericks manages to use every last bit of it. But it's doing this to cache files and generally speed things up, and is NOT an indicator that you don't have enough RAM.
So, if you upgrade to Mavericks, the way to see if you're benefiting is whether the beach balls you've noticed start to be less frequent, and whether crashing is a thing of the past.
Call me skeptic, but I learned there is no FREE LUNCH in life. So wonder what's the downside?
Downside is that it might not always help - if the data in memory is not very compressible then you save lesser RAM. It also doesn't make all the OS/Framework/App level bloat disappear.
Extra CPU cycles used when compressing and uncompressing app memory, maybe. But with he CPUs currently in use, I doubt it'll be noticeable to must users.
This isn't really a free lunch, more than it's a smarter way of doing things.
You could stack a bunch of lumber in a pickup truck haphazardly and not be able to carry a whole lot, with a bunch of it spilling out of the truck bed and onto the road every time you hit a bump. Or you could pack it in neat rows and use every last bit of capacity to transport the most lumber in a secure package.
If you do the latter, are you going to scratch your head at the extra lumber you can carry and say "but there's NO FREE LUNCH, so what's the downside?"
I'm running 16GB on my MacBook Pro, Mavericks 10.9
Activity Monitor shows 7.39GB Physical Memory currently used.
Currently have:
4 windows open in Chrome with 8, 4, 2 & 1 tab.
1 window open in Safari with 2 tabs,
Coda running with 8 open documents
MAMP running
iTunes radio playing
AND of course Time Machine is currently backing something up.
I started with 4GB and found that it wasn't nearly enough to handle my daily workflow.
Activity Monitor shows 7.39GB Physical Memory currently used.
Currently have:
4 windows open in Chrome with 8, 4, 2 & 1 tab.
1 window open in Safari with 2 tabs,
Coda running with 8 open documents
MAMP running
iTunes radio playing
AND of course Time Machine is currently backing something up.
I started with 4GB and found that it wasn't nearly enough to handle my daily workflow.