[luxurynick]

Hey all,

Is the "memory cleaning" option under security effective on RAM memory and leake?

Thanks in advance!

[wibbly]

Wirelessly posted (9000)

No. It's a security feature to clear cached data.

[mckinneycm]

But, yes it does free up memory. I do it every couple days and I get about 3mb more of free memory.

[JG in SB]

I am using a 3rd party app calle MemoryUp Pro and it works in the background to continuously free up memory. I like it, and have not noticed any performance lags associated with the program running in the background. It basically keeps my memory freed up all the time without me having to do anything.

[wibbly]

Wirelessly posted (9000)

Why is 'freeing up' memory of any benefit, given the OS does it periodically/when needed anyway?

[mckinneycm]

Originally Posted by wibbly

Wirelessly posted (9000)

Why is 'freeing up' memory of any benefit, given the OS does it periodically/when needed anyway?

The OS does it when needed in the form of erasing messages and other data. I don't know about you, but I don't want it doing that...

[wibbly]

No, I don't think that's correct. The OS *also*/first does 'garbage collection' periodically. It only starts deleting messages etc when there's STILL not enough memory available *after* the garbage collection, and more free memory is required. This is how Java machines (of which the BB is one) work. It's why you can look at the free memory before you go to bed and it mysteriously goes up over night! The OS's own garbage collection process does a tidy up... I don't think any 3rd partly application is doing anything clever/magic (other than maybe forcing early garbage collection).

I've not really ever understood the predisposition to have a max amount of 'free' memory all the time. Many BB applications work better/faster when they can use the "free memory" for something that's actually useful, like the browser cache, map caches for Google and BB Maps, etc. Purging these caches serves no useful purpose normally except forcing the caches to be repopulated by downloading the data all over again (and making users think they've acheived something by temporarily having a bigger number as 'free' memory)...

Memory leaks (caused by buggy applications that keep grabbing memory in such a way that it can't be restored to the free pool of memory by the garbage collection process) are a different matter. An OS reboot is normally required to release such memory to the pool. Given it's caused by a bug in the offending app (or OS), there's nothing another application can know to do to be certain to get such allocated memory "back".

So personally I wouldn't install any 3rd party "memory recovery utility", or otherwise force the free memory up. I can't see the benefit. All it serves to do is consume processor cycles and take up memory itself that could be better used elsewhere!

One exception I found - with earlier OSs, the browser would work faster if the browser cache was purged manually in the browser options once it got big (over a MB or so). Now it seems to stabalise around 2MB in size and doesn't seem to slow things down when it gets to that size.

[mckinneycm]

Yeah.....I got bored at 'No'.