Longer the CPU sleeps, More memory Dashboard Sneaks

[GimmeSlack12]

Sorry, but I had to make it rhyme.

So yeah, I noticed that my 1Gb of memory is slowly being taken away by something. Further inspection in Activity Monitor, I noticed every loaded widget was taking nearly 40Mb of RAM! So I restarted and looked again and they were all taking from 6mb-14mb of RAM. Thats more like it.

I hadn't restarted my computer since this morning, and I did have the machine asleep for a few lengthy periods. Anyone else come to this conclusion that Dashboard is stealing memory? And is there anything I can do about this without having to restart?

 

[mkrishnan]

When you restarted, did you check the activity monitor before or after starting dashboard for the first time? AFAIK, widgets don't initialize on boot until you open the dashboard, right?

P.S. "keeps" and "reaps" rhyme with "sleeps." "Sneaks" really doesn't. Even if you buy into Robert Frost's concept that all words rhyme with each other to some extent, it still doesn't rhyme very much.

 

[jim.]

"sneaks" rhymes for those of us who had to sit through American Poetry . It is called an almost rhyme or something. The last time I took English was AP English in high school, so I don't know (or really care anymore).

Aside from illogical semantics.... It is hard to diagnose true memory usage from 'top' or Activity Monitor. OSX is a UNIX-like OS, so it grabs and releases memory according to application needs and caching suggestions. I assume that you saw the 40 MB usage under 'Real Memory.' That includes true memory used plus any RAM caching. Virtual memory, as many have explained previously, tends to be the OS's best guess as to what should be allocated (and should be disregarded in memory usage calculations) on the HD. I am unaware of any sleep issues with Dashboard, as I don't notice them on my PB, nor have I seen any vocal complaints or bug reports on it. Do you primarily run 3rd party widgets or Apple ones? It could be a widget bug, but I am doubting it.

Do you notice extreme slowdowns after you awake from sleep?

Jim

 

[killuminati]

I'm on my powerbook and haven't restarted my computer since that quicktime update a couple days ago. Its asleep for at least 8 hours a day but all of my widgets only take up between 10-20 mb. With my 13 widgets though its about 200mb!

I hope in Leopard theres an update to dashboard so that widgets don't take up as much memory.

 

[TrenchMouth]

It is called an almost rhyme or something.

or poetic license

one thing that would be sure to check is how much memory is wired/active/inactive...you may have a gig being used, but not all of it being active at that time, and that is no big deal. if a program required more memory it would be appropriately allocated.

 

[CorvusCamenarum]

"sneaks" rhymes for those of us who had to sit through American Poetry . It is called an almost rhyme or something. The last time I took English was AP English in high school, so I don't know (or really care anymore).

FYI, it's called a near rhyme.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Just so you know I have a BS in Physics, so English is not something I claim to know. But I thought it was clever nonetheless.

The real memory monitor is what I'm looking at when I realize my memory is dwindling. I do not notice a slowdown and I don't generally have a problem with this. Except that my memory is being used for something that is not actually "being" used. I'm looking for people with similar situations, and/or a solution.

 

[goodtimes5]

I actually find this statement to be true. Whenever I felt my computer to be lagging, I just hit dashboard and the good times resumed.

 

[Jon'sLightBulbs]

You're all wrong. It's called slant ryhme. Go back to high school. HTH.

p.s. i'm in fourth grade.

 

[mkrishnan]

The real memory monitor is what I'm looking at when I realize my memory is dwindling. I do not notice a slowdown and I don't generally have a problem with this. Except that my memory is being used for something that is not actually "being" used. I'm looking for people with similar situations, and/or a solution.

Okay, I don't think I asked my question clearly enough. If you see that Dashboard is using a lot of memory, and then you reboot, and you immediately look at the memory monitor, you are seeing the monitor without the widgets initialized, and the memory utilization is low. But if you start dashboard and then look at the memory monitor, the widgets initialize and start taking up RAM from the system.

Nonetheless, 40MB of "real memory" per widget seems rather high. What widgets are you using? Some are definitely more intensive than others -- for instance, the four I use range from 3 MB (Calculon) to 17 MB (iCal Events) and I already have rid myself of my most memory intensive widgets for performance reasons.

I'm not aware of another solution than that one, because I don't think there is a *problem* -- widgets are just memory intensive. You can reset the Dashboard without rebooting, with some of the third party widget manager plugins for system preferences, or by going to terminal and executing "killall Dock" (Dock must be capitalized), though, if that helps.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

mkrishnan I understood your question. I think in my initial post I said that all loaded widgets show up in the Activity monitor, and most of them were showing memory use of around 40mb.

Right now I have not yet loaded my widgets and there is plenty of memory available. When I do load my widgets and I let 5 minutes or so pass, the activity monitor notes that my widgets (about 8 of them) are taking up memory of 7-14mb of RAM. Clearly different than my memory gouging problem. I notice the gouging after the machine is asleep for a while.

 

[rickvanr]

I never thought they'd take up that much RAM. In between 10-30MB. My Wikipedia widget takes up around 10MB, but my 24 Countdown widget takes up the most at 28MB. The mean is probably around 23MB per widget. I've been up for about 4 days now. I have 21 different widgets open, 26 if you count duplicates.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I never thought they'd take up that much RAM. In between 10-30MB. My Wikipedia widget takes up around 10MB, but my 24 Countdown widget takes up the most at 28MB. The mean is probably around 23MB per widget. I've been up for about 4 days now. I have 21 different widgets open, 26 if you count duplicates.

Go ahead and restart and right after initializing your widgets check to see how much memory they take up. I'll imagine it is much less. I'm not sure when they start stealing more memory, I just know that they do.

 

[rickvanr]

Go ahead and restart and right after initializing your widgets check to see how much memory they take up. I'll imagine it is much less. I'm not sure when they start stealing more memory, I just know that they do.

Well it's not really an issue to me, I have lots of RAM. I just remember when Mac OS took up less then a widget does now..

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Well it's not really an issue to me, I have lots of RAM. I just remember when Mac OS took up less then a widget does now..

Indeed. I remember those days too, and I'm glad I was there for them.
But having to find and trasah multiple copies of SimpleText for the extra Kilobytes on my hard-drive is not something I miss.

 

[FoxyKaye]

Anyone else hoping against all odds that Apple will release some way to disable Dashboard and Widgets?

Indeed. I remember those days too, and I'm glad I was there for them.
But having to find and trasah multiple copies of SimpleText for the extra Kilobytes on my hard-drive is not something I miss.

That made me chuckle. Seemed like every app wanted to install its own personal copy of SimpleText...

 

[rickvanr]

Anyone else hoping against all odds that Apple will release some way to disable Dashboard and Widgets?

If you don't have widgets running, they don't take up any resources.