Sarasota PC Monitor
MemoKit
A Software Review
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.MemoKit is a small software package (485K) designed to optimize your computer's RAM. When you work on your computer, you open and close various applications, sometimes repeatedly. With time the RAM in your computer becomes defragmented just like your hard drive does. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't provide a RAM defragmenter. Instead, your only solution is to reboot your PC, which clears out the RAM or purchase a third-party RAM defragmenter. Most RAM defragmenters have not been highly successful until now.
You can quickly download and install Memokit. There are no special settings needed. Memokit will install itself and put a shortcut in your startup folder. The first noticeable difference is the new icon in the system tray. It is a vertical bar with red, yellow and green sections. In my case it shows more red and yellow than green. In fact, much of the time my RAM is never in the green. As MemoKit runs, it analyses your RAM and sets target and trigger levels. The target level is the RAM percentage that the program considers to be ideal for your system. The trigger level is the low point where RAM must be recovered either manually or automatically to prevent a possible system crash or a slow down in system operation. Of course, Windows uses a hard disk swap file as virtual memory. However, you want to limit this usage as reading/writing to a hard drive is much slower than reading/writing to RAM.
MemoKit does recover RAM. I have been running MemoKit for about a week and have watched with interest what it does to free RAM as I use different applications. The time vs. MB graph for today shows a low point of 27MB of free RAM and then a recovery to 48MB. When I opened Internet Explorer, the value dropped to 35MB. What I find interesting about this is the fact that before I had MemoKit, Windows System Monitor generally showed that I had less than 20MB of free RAM.
MemoKit also provides a current list of running applications and you can review those that were running at earlier times. So when the RAM levels change, you can find out which program was opened. The program list also tells you how much RAM the application is using and how much virtual memory is required by that application. You can print out the list of applications anytime. You should be aware that many applications in RAM are system programs and DLL's. For example, on my computer MemoKit shows 29 applications running. The main ones are WordPerfect, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, ZoneAlarm and PC-Cillin. The rest of the programs are Windows system files and DLL's. The biggest memory hogs are IE and Word Perfect. Word Perfect is using 7MB of RAM and 23MB of virtual memory. IE is using 1MB of RAM and 16MB of virtual memory.
The other things that MemoKit reports are the various system resources (system, user & graphic). These are displayed on a time vs. percentage graph so you can see when they are used and released. To identify the programs using large amounts of resources or not releasing all the resources, you move a cursor to the graph location and identify the program from the application list. Newly started programs are color coded and closed programs are in gray. However, although you can identify resource hogs and leakers, MemoKit cannot recover resources. The information can be quite useful to you. Once you have identified applications that use too many resources or don't release all their resources, you can change the way you use them. Instead of opening and closing them repeatedly, you should open and close them as seldom as possible. That will enable you to conserve the resource memory. Remember that Resource Memory is limited and the only way to recover all of it is to reboot your system.
Overall, MemoKit is a very simple way to improve the RAM usage in your computer. The non-technical user doesn't need to do anything once MemoKit is installed. You can just let it function in automatic mode. Even this way, it will function to optimize your RAM.
MemoKit is available for downloading from ALS Software (www.memokit4all.com/order.html) for a price of $29.95. When ordered and registered, you are eligible for free upgrades for an unlimited time. The upgrades are e-mailed directly to the registered user. Technical support is available through the ALS Website and is listed in the user guide which comes with MemoKit. It will run with an computer using Win9X, ME, 2000, NT or XP. :
Copyright 2001. This article is from the November 2001 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,300+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.