Memory leak on MBA?

[misterneums]

Hello,

Perhaps I'm in the wrong forum to post this, but here goes anyways.

I am experiencing what I believe to be a memory leak on my 2011 MBA. When I boot up, I'm using around 1.2 GB of memory according to Desktop Monitor. After while, with using different programs, opening and closing them, I end up having the majority of my memory in "used" state, even when the programs have been shut down via quit. I'm wondering if this normal with lion and or 2011 MBA's.

Currently, according to Desktop Monitor, I have the following for memory usage.
Used: 2.71 GB
Free 904 MB
Wired: 1.07 GB
Active 1.64 GB
Inactive 413 MB

Any advice/tips would be be appriecated, as I can notice program performance issues when I've got a high amount of used memory.

PS - I'm going to reboot and post what desktop monitor is saying from a fresh boot.

Edit: Fresh Boot is as follows:
Used: 1.29
Free: 2.53
Wired: 832 MB
Active: 506 MB
Inactive: 413 MB

 

[bill-p]

Lion uses a lot of RAM for cache on startup, and it continues to cache that RAM as you use more apps. When an app asks for more RAM than the current free amount, Lion frees up its cache and allocates accordingly.

The cache is to make sure things remain zippy and fast all across. It's perfectly normal.

On a side note, if you have more than 4GB of RAM, it'll show about 1.5GB to 2GB used on startup. That's also perfectly normal. Windows 7 does that, too.

 

[gentlefury]

Nothing to worry about, Lion just uses whatever ram is available. I always have free on my 4GB MBA about the same amount as my gf's 2GB MBA. I its either not showing the free ram correctly or its just using whatever is available. I've never had a slowdown or crash tho.

 

[misterneums]

Thanks for the replies guys. Just wanted to make sure things were normal.

 

[gentlefury]

Lion uses a lot of RAM for cache on startup, and it continues to cache that RAM as you use more apps. When an app asks for more RAM than the current free amount, Lion frees up its cache and allocates accordingly.

The cache is to make sure things remain zippy and fast all across. It's perfectly normal.

On a side note, if you have more than 4GB of RAM, it'll show about 1.5GB to 2GB used on startup. That's also perfectly normal. Windows 7 does that, too.

Windows 7 annoyingly allocates almost 3GB HDD space for swap, which really annoys me!

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Windows 7 annoyingly allocates almost 3GB HDD space for swap, which really annoys me!

You can change that in Windows settings. I don't know about Win7, but you used to right-click on Computer, then Properties and delve into settings that way.

 

[gentlefury]

You can change that in Windows settings. I don't know about Win7, but you used to right-click on Computer, then Properties and delve into settings that way.

I might have to check that out. I obviously have limited space dealing only in SSD....Mac is very conservative on the space it takes up. Using only 64GB on my MacHD I have 24GB left with all my apps on there. Windows 7 takes up 16GB just for a clean install!!! What a waste!