Forget Your Memory Problems!	Visited: 1300 5.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Jim Phillips October 18, 2003

Your software runs slowly.

Your system freezes.

You have to reboot every time you use that new program.

Worse, your system crashes and a morning's work is lost. Your computer is trying to tell you something.

First, a refresher on how PCs work.

When you turn on your PC, data and instructions are loaded into RAM (Random Access Memory). RAM is temporary storage. It holds programs while they are running and also the files and data used by those programs. When you turn off your PC, everything in RAM disappears, so computers have long-term storage (your hard drive) where you can permanently store your programs and files while your computer is shut down. You "write" data to the hard disk when you click the Save button.

Since operating systems, digital video and the latest software applications are all hungry for RAM, you will quickly notice when your system's memory is running low.

Even worse, a poorly written software program may not release its hold on your system's memory even after it is closed and you will need to reboot your PC to get the memory back.

Experts will tell you that the biggest performance boost for the money is to add more RAM to your PC. But adding physical RAM is not the only answer.

There may be an even cheaper way to improve the performance of your PC that directly addresses the problems of low memory and the memory "leaks" caused by poorly written software.

MemTurbo II is a small software program (known as a "utility") that searches your system for memory leaks and returns the unused memory to your system for use by other applications.

MemTurbo II operates in the background while other programs are running, visible only by its tray icon. When you need more memory, press the hotkey and the program goes to work. You can also set the program to automatically start when your memory reaches a certain, critically low level.

MemTurbo II will defragment your physical RAM and
has a "Scrub" option that finds RAM a regular
"Recover" has missed.

MemTurbo II costs $29.95 but you can download an evaluation copy of the software from http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/ or visit the company's website at http://www.memturbo.com.

I am still using my 30-day evaluation copy.

I was surprised. The first Scrub I performed recovered over 60 MB of RAM.

The bottom line - MemTurbo is a great utility that keeps my Windows98 system stable and saves me from having to reboot my computer to free up
memory.