[daiyi666@yahoo.com]

I'm sure that the answer to what constitutes normal memory usage depends on many factors. But currently according to Activity Monitor, OW is using about 175 MB of real memory. Is this normal? It seems rather high, though Safari consumes a fair amount itself.

[Forrest]

Define "using." Keep in mind, OS X doesn't automatically remove memory allocation from an app unless another app needs it. I've seen up to about 800MB allocated to OW, but I've always had free memory.

[daiyi666@yahoo.com]

I must confess to not understanding all the mysteries of memory management in OS X. Performance was very good with 5.5 and version 7 has been very stable for me. So I'm very pleased. My only request is to get LiveDictionary to work with OW.

[macsterdam]

I'm having memory problems as well. After 6 hours of use OW uses 250 mb of real memory. *ouch*. Otherwise just perfect: fast, crash-free and overall excellent.

[daiyi666@yahoo.com]

Would opening other applications while using OW give users any indication of how the OS is allocating memory? Generally I only run a couple at a time.

[Forrest]

I don't technically know this stuff, I've just heard it on the mailing list a few times. OW does show as having a lot of memory allocated to it from time to time.

Currently on my machine OW shows as using about 600MB physical and 1.2GB virtual. I'm not concerned because I have about 2.5GB inactive.

If other apps need the memory, OS X will automatically reclaim it. Until then, it stays allocated to the app that requested it.

This isn't to say that OW hasn't had memory leaks in previous betas, it's just that there's more to it than looking at Activity Monitor.

</layman's regurgitation of what I've heard>

[Mad Hatter]

I can remember when there were some "serious" memory leaks (long long ago in the distant past years ago) when it could eat up all your memory and leave 10MB free, out of 1GB installed.

My understanding is that G5s use memory (or code can be optimized quite differently) and use more than a G4.

I was surprised that OW 5.5 was 'only' using a couple hundred MB. If you want to push it, open 100 windows, preferably jpeg's, and see what shows up.

I assume that Tiger will also do more to cache windows as well as code. Or whether each window has its own "local" code or 'thread' attached. Or whether disk cache has any affect on memory use.

It seems rather well behaved and tame in memory footprint. And what is "allocated" to VM doesn't mean it is even used (like that 1.2GB I often see owned by kernel but not written to disk or paged out).

VueScan lets you allocate xxx for previews, and yyy for scanning which seems to help, and in my case I assign 2-3x the default (VueScan use to always create multiple swap files in the past, too, but doesn't now).