Used RAM weirdly high.

[cpnotebook80]

I have atmonitor running and it shows my ram used at 97%.
Nothing else except itunes and firefox is running
I have 10gb of ram. Free shows 307mb. Should i worry? Inactive shows like 8gb.
I notice that each update for the OS slows the system down and introduces sluggishness instead of smooth and speed.

it would be nice to purge the used memory unless it has some purpose like speeding up applications to open again that has used the ram before.

any advice
thanks

 

[J the Ninja]

it would be nice to purge the used memory unless it has some purpose like speeding up applications to open again that has used the ram before.

That is what those 8GB of "Inactive" RAM are doing, they will be dumped if needed for something else. While inactive RAM is technically in use in the sense that there is data stored there, referring to it as being used is a bit misleading if you are trying to see if you are running short on RAM. Hence why some tools like iStat have an option to count it as being free.

For more info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342