|
We recommend disabling RAM
Charger for Netscape
Please remember, RAM Charger is not all or nothing. You
may disable RAM Charger for individual applications, in the
"Get Info" window, or in RAM Charger Application Settings.
In this way. you may continue to use RAM Charger to obtain
the most from your memory with other applications.
Though many users report that they notice decreased
crashing and fewer out of memory errors when running
Netscape RAM Charged, other users report that Netscape
consumes all the memory on their machine - causing more
problems than it helps. As a result, we recommend that you
avoid enabling RAM Charger for Netscape.
If you select Netscape in the RAM Charger Settings
application and read the "Notes" you should see:
¥Somewhat "greedy" application¥
This application can be RAM Charged. However, though it
starts small, RAM Charged it will grow to consume all
memory on your machine without releasing memory.
In more recent releases of Netscape, or depending on the
plugins you have loaded, Netscape may even consume
unreasonable amounts of memory on startup.
Should you wish to try RAM Charging Netscape, please pay
special attention to the Total Memory available, and watch
Netscape's expansion, to be sure Netscape is not using more
memory than is reasonable. To monitor these values use the
RAM Charger pull down menu, and the More About This
Macintosh window. If Netscape consumes too much memory, you
may find you are unable to accomplish other tasks - like
launching other applications and printing.
Netscape employs its own RAM Charging methods, though not
as comprehensive as RAM Charger, and this rasises two
noticable points:
- Disabling RAM Charger for Netscape is not the end of
the world, since Netscape has its own dynamic usage of
the total free memory.
- Beware that Netscape's own dynamic growth may show up
as your "system" growing and shrinking.
What's the deal?
It would be nice if there was an effective way to
optimize a program like NetScape. Unfortunately, its memory
use strategy just doesn't adapt well to RAM Charger giving
it access to all free memory on your machine. It will
usually start out small (depending on your configuration),
but as you access things on the Web, Netscape continues to
keep everything it can in memory, as long as more is
available. That way it is very quick to return to any page
you have been to before. So, as you use it, Netscape just
takes more and more memory and never gives any of it back.
In general, most applications on the Mac allocate memory
only when and where they need to use it. Since RAM Charger's
purpose is to give charged applications access to all the
free memory in the computer, some greedy apps may take it
all. This greedy nature of some applications is a historical
artifact resulting from the traditional "Fixed memory" model
of the Mac. Unfortunately, there is no way RAM Charger can
make all memory available to applications, yet stop them
from using it. That will have to be taken up with the
application's author. We do have a settings that help with
applications that take all the memory immediately at startup
by delaying access to available memory, but this does not
help with Netscape. This is the Charging Method "Delay
Access To All Memory" documented in the RAM Charger manual.
Since this method does not help with Netscape, the best I
can suggest is that you disable RAM Charging Netscape, using
RAM Charger to help wit the rest of your applications.
In the past we have attempted to work with Netscape to
address these concerns. However, they were unresponsive. If
you have some feelings on the matter you may wish to contact
Netscape directly to see what their current postion is.
| 
