ram

Today at the World Wide Developer Conference keynote, Apple announced a new feature in the upcoming OS X Mavericks that is reminiscent of the RAM Doubler technology available for classic Mac systems in the '90s.

In the mid-'90s, Mac systems came with 8MB to 32MB RAM, and as has always been the case, greater application usage required more RAM.

Overcoming RAM restrictions required you either purchase more RAM, or enable and expand virtual memory usage in the system's control panel to make use of the hard drive as a location for RAM contents. Unfortunately these features were either … Read more

Smart RAM Booster increases the speed of Android devices through several functions. It can stop the functions of applications running in the background with a multifunction widget or through the applications' user interface. There is also a cache cleaner that seems to speed the device up.

Smart RAM Booster installs easily. The small size allows the app to download almost instantly and there are no advanced features or registration needed. The user interface is pretty basic but the advanced settings can be confusing. For users not familiar with this type of application, some of the options may need more thorough … Read more

At Download.com, we've long recommended the excellent Mark Russinovich-created and Microsoft-supplied Process Explorer freeware, which provides scads of info on all of your Windows PC processes and options for managing them. Well, Process Lasso is like the peanut butter for Process Explorer's chocolate. It lets users set default priorities and CPU affinities for specific processes, establish rules for how processes behave, and also create alerts and automatic events for when processes misbehave or use too much memory. The interface is outdated and not beginner friendly, but Process Lasso offers very useful features in a powerful little package.… Read more

Computers once had such small memories that Windows couldn't remember where it put its keys without registering them (it still can't, actually), but today's PCs have so much random access memory (RAM) that Windows can do much more than walk and chew gum at the same time, computationally speaking. Plenty of PCs still come up short in the RAM department, though, including a lot of older machines struggling to keep up with today's bloated Web sites and high-quality multimedia. For those PCs, the answer is the same today as it was way back then: a tool … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in with questions about Spotlight not being able to find files that are known to exist in a user's account, options for adding 16GB of RAM to older MacBook Pro systems, and options for troubleshooting and fixing a broken trackpad in a MacBook. I welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Spotlight not finding files MacFixIt reader Mike asks:

RAM sticks, known for their chip creep and random failures, are among the more annoying pieces of hardware to pinpoint as the source of a technical issue. Before you start digging around in the tower, it's best to start with a quick and free memory check via Windows. This way, you'll know whether or not it's worth swapping around sticks of RAM to see which one is the dud.

Here's how to get started:

Step 1: Open the Start Menu and type in mdsched.exe, then press enter.

Step 2. A pop-up will appear on your … Read more

When you install memory in most Mac systems, provided everything went well, the computer will simply boot with a new memory capacity. However, on the Mac Pro you might see a tool called Apple Memory Utility launch to indicate a new memory configuration has been detected.

This tool should show only once and state whether or not the installed memory is in the recommended slot configuration for optimal performance. In some cases, however, this tool may load every time you boot the system after upgrading. While it can be dismissed by pressing the OK button, having it load each time … Read more

Regular cleaning helps keep your PC running like new, but it's not enough: you need speed. UniBlue's SpeedUpMyPC 2013 with Registry Booster not only purges junk files and defragments your PC's registry, on demand or on schedule, but its Active Speed Tools can tweak nearly any PC's performance. For example, its CPU Manager keeps runaway processes from using up available system resources, while the Start Menu Software Accelerator launches your apps quicker. Of course, you can also deselect any tool you don't want to run or any item you don't want to clean, as … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in with questions about managing custom services in OS X, RAM prices for MacBook systems falling dramatically over the past year, and resetting a forgotten administrator password without admin access and without an OS X installer or recovery disc. I welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Managing custom services in OS X MacFixIt reader Francis asks: