High Memory Usage? why?

I have a MBP 15" core2duo with 2gig ram. It's been slowing down recently and I can't help but notice that 1.15gigs of ram is shown as active when I have no apps running. (I posted a pic of activity monitor). I see that this is mostly due to 'Kernel_task' and another process that comes up called 'mono'

What are these and what should I do?

If you need any more info let me know. Thanks

Your Real memory doesn't add up. Show "All processes" instead of "Active Processes" to find out. Also, Kernel_task seems to be using very little memory. The 1.17GB is Virtual Memory and is fine.

ok...is 'real' memory the one that i should be looking at? I took a new snap shot and somethin called 'mono' seems to be taking up the majority of it (the only apps open where the monitor and safari). If it matters, I added a gig of ram from crucial about 6 months ago to up it to 2gigs.

thanks again,

Never heard of mono. If that's not something you have installed yourself, try spotlighting it to see what app it is associated with and take it off. 1.22GB real memory sure is a lot of memory...

I'm certain that the posts # 3 & 4 at this thread also explain this problem too:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84053