That was true in the OS9 days but today memory is dynamically allocated to each app as it requests it. If the app requests more memory than is available then the OS will swap out to disk areas of memory that haven't been used in a while (called virtual memory). This process is relatively slow but usually it's just swapping out stuff that hasn't been touched in a while. At some point that swapping can be happening so much that the system bogs down (sometimes called thrashing) and the only cure is to add more RAM. So the short answer is that adding more RAM may be the only way to speed things up, if your system is thrashing trying to find enough memory for your applications. I usually notice this when I start getting a lot of apps running all at once with large documents loaded in each of them. The other thing that slows systems down is when one app is doing some CPU intensive work. I'm surprised how often Safari is the culprit because I have 12 tabs opened and each one has some cpu sucking flash animation ads on it consuming all my CPU resources. You can use Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder to poke around and see which process is consuming the most CPU.
CB M AUSTEN wrote: > Hi, > > I wonder if anyone can help me. > > In the dim distant past I think there was a way of increasing the memory > allocated to an application to speed up its running. > > Of course I can't remember how to do this and don't know how to do it in OSX. > > Can anyone help me. > > Thanks, > > Mark > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
