Low system memory :(

hey.

I bought my Macbook Pro 17'', Intel 3.06 GHz, 4 GB RAM a few days ago. (OS X 10.5.7)

However, I seem to keep experiencing this System memory issue...

Right after I start the Mac OS, I got around 3 GB of System Memory free (which is still a bit weird, is the Mac OS by itself requiring a whole GB of RAM?), but the more I use my system, the less RAM becomes available. This is normal, but I would expect the memory to return once the applications are closed. Shouldn't that happen?

However, after working with different applications, especially vmware-fusion, and Logic Pro, although I close the applications, only very little System Memory returns. I have attached a screen shot of the system, including the Activity Monitor window. As you can see, with only Safari and Finder opened, I only got less than 700 MB of memory free, out of the 4 GB I have

Is there any way to fix this? I believe this might be what is called a "memory leak". Is there any way to sort it out, without having to reboot my system each time I need memory?

Thanks, I really hope someone can help me out.

Cheers.


Here's the screenshot: http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/4207/picture1ysl.png

That is entirely normal and nothing to worry about

OX X will use as much memory as it can to cache frequently used applications and system resources, in fact it is being efficient.

The fact that it looks like there isn't much 'free' memory is by the by

OS X will release active memory to whatever application needs it on an as needed basis. Your lack of free space does not mean that OS X will swallow all that memory and not release it to other running applications

louishen is correct.

For more information, see
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor