@guns:

wow. purge did the job :D
thank u very much for ur comment!

c'mon people: /usr/bin/purge

Just type in 'purge' at the command line (Terminal.app)

from the man page:

PURGE BSD System Manager's Manual PURGE

NAME
purge -- force disk cache to be purged (flushed and emptied)

SYNOPSIS
purge

DESCRIPTION
Purge can be used to approximate initial boot conditions with a cold disk buffer cache for performance analysis.
It does not affect anonymous memory that has been allocated through malloc, vm_allocate, etc.

SEE ALSO
sync(8), malloc(3)

Alternately, run 'du /' in the terminal for 10 seconds and then kill it with 'killall du'

Rapidly seeking the hard disk tends to free up inactive memory.

Trouble is that Cunning Fox does not work on Intel, apparently.

ppl using this application should check out "Cunning Fox". It might be even of higher use than this tool.

iFreeMem is fantastic!
I don't know what all the fuss is about, but I find this program extremely useful in my situation. This is because of the following:
1. I have a Mac mini (PPC) with only 512 MB of RAM.
2. I use my Mac mini as my primary desktop/work system, my primary entertainment/gaming system, and my primary video editing system.
3. I like to leave my Mac mini running- I rarely reboot so "free" memory is usually scarce.

Switching between application sets (Running NeoOffice/iTunes/Camino and switching to Final Cut Pro/DVD Studio Pro) can be extremely tedious. After my machine has been in use for a while, new memory-intensive programs that I start are often abnormally sluggish for the entire time that I use them. I used to reboot to solve this issue, which was annoying.

However, iFreeMem can eliminate the sluggishness in a minute or two! Just fire it up, hit optimize, wait a moment, and select the application. In a few seconds it runs as slick as if you had freshly booted the machine.

I'm not sure what all the benchmarking means, but I can tell you from experience that Final Cut Pro DOES run way smoother after iFreeMem does it's thing. Before I started using iFreeMem, FCP would often hang while I was using it, which was extremely disruptive and annoying when trying to edit video.

I imagine that this program would appear to do little for people with newer and more expensive Macs that come with loads of RAM, but my resources are very limited in this regard. Mac mini and possibly MacBook owners with this problem should certainly give iFreeMem a try!

look, it does what it is supposed to. many people might not need it, but if someone feels they do, it really does not do them any harm to try it out. unless you are blind, or are missing fingers and cannot operate a keyboard or mouse, or...well, i am sure universal access can help you out. hmmm. but yeah. i am done here. there is no point getting all heated about whether programs like this serve a purpose, because the fact is that to many people of all different types of technological capabilities programs like these do serve a purpose, to many people they dont. it is not the end of the world people.

johndude: You benchmark isn't objective and not scientific at all. I won't repeat myself, arguments are stated here and at the link provided in my earlier comment. I do agree that you don't make any false statements or tell lies on your homepage. Still, the existance of such tools is highly questionable, which anyone with a decent education in computer sience (including os internals) can agree on (describing that in depth would require me to cite several papers and I have already wasted enough time on this).

...and the description here on iusethis is still pure marketing.

roeme, you are mistaken, everything is not the same, please see my website for benchmarks and clarification on the specific performance improvemement the product helps with, its hardly subjective, stop being so darn negative!

Ack, guys. The improvements you feel are subjective. Better said with the "placebo" effect.

I could point out why such tools are of no effect, however; it wouldn't fit in here and require a bit of understanding of operating system internals. Maybe I'll find some resources on the net.

/edit: Look here: http://www.bitsum.com/winmemboost.asp It's windows based, however, applies to other os' as well.

massive improvement on the web site! the description is quite detailed now and the price tag has been lowered a bit. really, there is no reason for anyone interested not to give the program a shot at this point... and despite what may have seemed like a negative review (my first comment) a couple of lines down the page, the program does do what its developer(s) claim it to do.