[Kenstee]

Someone answered one of my othe posts about slow system performance by saying my PB 12" may have "leaky memory." First, what is it? Second, how do I find out if my RAM has it?

Thanks.

[Karim]

Memory leaks are a progamming isue not a hardware issue. Some programs, even Os's, have bugs that leave parts of your ram inaccessible because they think it is still in use. Eventually these bugs can cause system slow downs and eventually crashes when the system "runs out of memory" because of the "leaks".

It sounds like the person that told you of your suspected problem didn't really understand what memory leaks really are.

If your computer feels slower, look for added programs or drivers that you don't need. If your not sure, reinstall your Mac OSX and take notice of your performance level then slowly add your software to see what is causing whatever problem you feel your having.

[swsteckly]

A memory 'leak' is much more common on Windows PCs. In fact, I have never experienced one or know anyone who has experienced one on the Mac platform.

There are other, much more probable causes to your problem. Good luck!

[7Macfreak]

Originally posted by Kenstee:
Someone answered one of my othe posts about slow system performance by saying my PB 12" may have "leaky memory." First, what is it? Second, how do I find out if my RAM has it?

Thanks.

did you try reinstalling your OS?
before that, did you try deleting the powermanager file?

[american_whale]

Originally posted by swsteckly:
A memory 'leak' is much more common on Windows PCs. In fact, I have never experienced one or know anyone who has experienced one on the Mac platform.

There are other, much more probable causes to your problem. Good luck!

I really doubt that any commonly used operating system has a memory leak - that would be a showstopper. You can still get software that is leaky, but I would expect this to be increasingly rare. This is not a PC vs Mac issue.

[Kenstee]

Originally posted by 7Macfreak:
did you try reinstalling your OS?
before that, did you try deleting the powermanager file?

Yes, did delete powermanager file. And it did help my machine run much cooler.

Will try the complete wipe and system reinstall when I have some downtime in a wek or so.

Thanks.

[OSXFreak]

A memory leak is caused by poorly written software. Programs allocate as much memory as they need, and are supposed to release it when they've finished with it. If they don't release it, that memory is "lost" until you next reboot.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by swsteckly:
A memory 'leak' is much more common on Windows PCs. In fact, I have never experienced one or know anyone who has experienced one on the Mac platform.

There are other, much more probable causes to your problem. Good luck!

Ummm... sorry. WRONG. Where do you get this stuff? Do you just pull it out of thin air? A memory leak simply means a developer isn't "cleaning up" memory properly. I take it you have never written a program in C or C++ that allocates memory from the heap. It's trivially easy to "leak" memory in that case, and unless you use a "leak detector" tool like Purify, it's nearly impossible by reading the code to be absolutely sure you are NOT leaking code in a large application.

I'll tell you one app which *did* leak awfully on OS X -- Acquisition. One build I left running (I believe the problem was fixed) and my system was paging like crazy and I found Acquisition was using about 800 MB of RAM. Well, killing the app took about 5 minutes and then all was back to normal. It won't bring down OS X except in the worst circumstances, but it can certainly kill performance.

But really... I could write an app in about 30 seconds which would leak and bring the OS to a crawl. To suggest these things don't exist on the Mac platform... really you're too uninformed to comment on these types of matters, so you should not proffer your opinion on things which you have no idea about.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by OSXFreak:
A memory leak is caused by poorly written software. Programs allocate as much memory as they need, and are supposed to release it when they've finished with it. If they don't release it, that memory is "lost" until you next reboot.

It's usually not "lost" until you reboot -- it's "lost" until you kill that particular application or service. The OS gives each program its memory space, and the program can leak in its space, but by and large it won't leak memory in other locations.

If you use something like "top" to note memory use, you cannot get an accurate picture because the OS "caches" some information and doesn't report it as free, even though it really is considered "free" and will be re-used if necessary.