Beardo wrote:
Get Microsoft.
Worst. Advice. Ever. (And I use Windows.)
So here's the deal, Rusty. I think you're talking about two different things: Memory and hard drive space.
Memory is also known as RAM. You probably have between 1 and 2GB of it. Generally speaking, the programs you're running
right now, documents you have open right now, the song or video you're playing right now, web pages you have open right now, and so on are stored in memory. When you turn off your computer, everything in RAM is erased, and when you turn it back on, you're starting over fresh.
Your hard drive is a different thing entirely. Your hard drive is where things are stored for the long term: That term paper you wrote (and saved), the music you've downloaded, the programs you've installed, the photos from your digital camera. Your hard drive is probably between 50 and 250GB in capacity. Things on your hard drive sticks around forever, or at least until you or some program delete it.
It sounds to me like you're running out of memory, not hard drive space, though it could be both. Some programs take up a lot more memory than others. Watching a video, playing a 3D game, or using Photoshop, for example, all take up a lot of memory. Editing a document uses somewhat less memory. Some more buggy programs will take more and more memory the longer they run. When you quit a program that's using a lot of memory, all of the memory it was using is (usually, unless the program is buggy) freed up immediately.
So, if your computer is running very slowly, a good place to start is quitting some of the programs you have open. Remember that on a Mac, closing all of a program's visible windows is
not the same as quitting the program. The correct way to quit a Mac program is to go to the File menu and choose Quit. Just clicking on the circle in the corner of the window does
not quit the program (sorry if you already know this--everyone's level of expertise is different). Once you quit a program or two, you should see the amount of available memory (not hard drive space) increase.
Another thing that can take up a lot of memory is having a lot of tabs open in your web browser (e.g. Safari or Firefox), especially if those tabs have, say, YouTube videos, Flash games, etc. on them. Firefox in particular is bad about freeing up memory it isn't using anymore, so if you frequently have a lot of tabs open, it may be helpful to quit it occasionally and start it again.
Like I said, having a full hard drive can also contribute to a slow computer, because when your computer runs out of memory it uses the hard drive as "virtual memory." If there is no space on your hard drive to use for virtual memory, it can slow down your experience considerably.
I don't have a Mac, so I'm not sure how you can find out exactly how much memory (RAM) you have. Many would consider 1GB to be the bare minimum, and 2GB would probably be enough to keep your computer happy.
_________________
StrongCanada wrote:
Jordan, you are THE SUCK at kissing! YAY! Just thought you should know! Rainbows! Sunshine!
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