03-30-2012, 11:19 AM

Sorry if this is int he wrong place, and also I know this question has been asked previously, but I did read the posts and didnt really understand them or they werent useful to me.

My problem is that I often need to run several programs at once which use a lot of memory, for example inDesign, Photoshop AND illustaitor, as well as firefox. I also now need to run Dragon Dictate, which is what is causing the problems.

With nothing open or running except for the activity monitor, it says I only have about 1GB out of 4GB free, my page out count is also pretty high at 2GB, so you can see how I would be having trouble when trying to use the programs mentioned above, especially all at the same time.

The most obvious answer to my question I guess would be to get more RAM, however, is it normal to have so little free space when literally nothing is running? And I mean nothing, I looked at the activity monitor before opening firefox to post this.

What are all these things in the activity monitor and how are they using so much memory?

Thanks!
F

03-30-2012, 11:31 AM

Can you post a screenshot of AM for us? Second, and perhaps more importantly, how are you reading the memory usage? It's very possible that you have more memory available than you think.

03-30-2012, 02:14 PM

One other tidbit of information that would help would be to reboot and immediately after boot, check Activity Monitor and see what free memory you have. Lion needs almost 2 GB for itself.

03-30-2012, 02:16 PM

That value of 2GB depends on how much memory you have and what type of processor you have. If you have more memory and more processing cores, Lion will use more. As such, it is very possible to use less than 2GB. In fact, I'm only using about 1.8GB of RAM and I've been up for a few hours (I'm also running a few applications).

03-30-2012, 02:25 PM

Interesting... My little ole mini as listed in my profile takes 1.72GB immediately after startup, that was prior to upgrading the RAM in my machine. That was with the base load of Lion right from the Mac store. I found that I could run one program i.e. Chrome with one tab open before it started swapping out to the disk.

Since upgrading to 8GB, it flies using multiple programs. with few page outs.

04-01-2012, 03:13 PM

Hi, thanks for your reply, I actually realised I hadnt turned off or rebooted my computer in a fair few months, once I did this, the memory thing seemed fine; however, my mac is now freezing for no apparent reason, not sure if there is a virus or something, ive left it alone and run a scan, and repaired the disk permissions, im using my laptop just now, but will port a screenshot of AM when I'm back on my desktop.

I do however have a new problem. I have a wacom bamboo tablet, and I tried using on my powerbook G4 but i cant install the drivers, when i double click on the icon to open the application and install everything it says the application is not supported on this architecture. However, the system requirements for the bamboo are simply to have os x 10.5.8 which i just updated to, and a powerpc or intell processor, which I have (1.67 GHz powerpc G4 to be exact).

any ideas why my tablet wont work?

Thanks

04-01-2012, 03:19 PM

thanks, the rebooting helped, but as Ive just said, I have another problem now and also a seperate problem with my laptop and wacom bamboo tablet!

Thanks for the rebooting tip though =) i dont think I have lion... will have to check when my desktop is finished doing all its scans and things

04-01-2012, 04:07 PM

Originally Posted by flb123

Hi, thanks for your reply, I actually realised I hadnt turned off or rebooted my computer in a fair few months, once I did this, the memory thing seemed fine; however, my mac is now freezing for no apparent reason, not sure if there is a virus or something, ive left it alone and run a scan, and repaired the disk permissions, im using my laptop just now, but will port a screenshot of AM when I'm back on my desktop.

I do however have a new problem. I have a wacom bamboo tablet, and I tried using on my powerbook G4 but i cant install the drivers, when i double click on the icon to open the application and install everything it says the application is not supported on this architecture. However, the system requirements for the bamboo are simply to have os x 10.5.8 which i just updated to, and a powerpc or intell processor, which I have (1.67 GHz powerpc G4 to be exact).

any ideas why my tablet wont work?

Thanks

Checking the Wacom website, they have several different drivers for OS X. Make sure you download on that specifically says PPC support.

04-01-2012, 07:34 PM

"I actually realised I hadnt turned off or rebooted my computer in a fair few months, once I did this, the memory thing seemed fine"

- Lol, I switched from windows, 7 years ago now and this sort of remark still cracks me up. While mac's do certainly have their querks and were all aware that they cost more, **** they're stable!