Posted by Todd (65.187.231.105) on January 09, 2002 at 08:32:27:
In Reply to: Goodnight Nancy, sweet dreams! Frank... posted by Rachel on January 08, 2002 at 23:58:50:
Every time you open a program (IE, your email, word processors, games, etc), most of them "steal" or reserve a portion of your RAM memory. Proper design would dictate that, once you close that program, it gives the RAM back to the pool available for use by other progs, but some progs don't play well or like to share. They keep some of that RAM reserved.
So, just for example, if you open IE 10 times in a day (I don't mean open it once and come to the chmb 10 times, but open and close IE completely) and it "steals" 5 megs of memory each time, by the end of the day you'd have 50 less megs of mem available, thus slowing down your puter.
The only way to circumvent this is to make sure you fully shut down your puter. I recommend once per day. A lot of folks who have always on internet connections (DSL, cable) get in the habit of never shutting down.
I'm sure Frank or one of the other real puter pros will correct any mistakes I've made, but this is the way I understand it. I've had the same problem with my work puter in the past, since I tended to leave it on for days at a time.
KTSSU,
T