Time for a RAM Check

very good
key review info
application features
  • Frees up unused memory
  • (2 more, see all...)

Since the beginning of the computer age, more and more people have adopted the machines into their homes. The technological progress proved all the lamentations from the beginning melt away and now computers have become the most spread tools in both home and corporate environment. Softwares have been perfected in order to eliminate the errors of the end result. The costs were high and people had to be trained to work side by side with the machines.

And yet, just like humans, computers tend to behave strangely when fed with too much information or when there is too much data to process. The adverse reaction in their case is failure of the operating system, low performance, less speed, etc. The reasons depend on the user activity, ergo humans are the ones to blame for mismanagement of the system.

In order to avoid all the unpleasant events that may occur, or to delay them as much as possible, on the market emerged a special category of applications designed to maintain and keep the computers in tip-top shape. Defragmenters, registry cleaners, CPU monitors, uninstallers, anti-malware applications, firewalls, backup and recovery tools, they are all working for bettering your system and the well being of your machine.

RAM (Random Access Memory) is a vital component of your computer. Its allocation to the different processes running on your system can make the difference between a fast computer and a low performing one. However, more then often it happens that a process gulps up more then it should and whenever you need that RAM for finishing a more important task there isn't any to take from and the job takes longer to complete then usually.

RAM Medic comes to the rescue by freeing up locked memory in order to make it available for new processes. The application is absolutely free and even a brain-dead monkey could use it (I mean this as a compliment for the user friendly interface). There are no risks running this software on your computer.

The interface is intuitive enough and if you find it hard to understand the different options available, refer to the help file and find our answers. RAM Medic is even equipped with a series of shortcuts for faster RAM freeing. By using them you can free up to 70% of the computer RAM (Ctrl+1 for 10%, Ctrl+2 for 20%, so on and so forth).

The application will not close upon pressing the close button of the interface, but retreat to system tray. This way it will always be available for you. The RAM taken by the process did not exceed 7MB while in stand-by.

The three options running down in the left side of the application window are named very suggestively. The first one is called RAM Medic and will display a histogram of memory usage and the CPU level. Under the graphic elements there is the Target Free RAM slide bar. Simply drag the slider to the left or right in order to set the amount of memory you wish to be freed and press Free Now! button. The values at the bottom of the window will start changing and you can compare the amount of free memory before and after the operation.

Checking it out in Task Manager will do the same and will confirm the memory release. The only discordance with the Windows tool is the value recording time. Task Manager in its normal speed tends to record the data slower. The histogram updating time can be set in RAM Medic also, on a scale going from Fast to Slow through 10 speed levels.

The Options button invoke a new window dedicated to configuring RAM Medic menu. Thus you can hide/show the optimization progress, set the application to auto-load at system startup, set the time interval for automatic optimization (from 10 to 180 minutes) and the amount of memory to be freed when the task is due.

The next menu of the program is called Process Manager. It is futile to say what is its purpose as the name says it all. The options here permit refreshing, terminating the selected process and setting its priority. The priorities are Idle, Below Normal, Normal, Above Normal, High and Real Time. A brief description and explanation of each priority is available at the bottom of the window.

The last of the menus made available in RAM Medic, Advanced Features, is actually a presentation of the shortcuts for automatically freeing up memory. The application will also calculate the equivalent of 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% and 70% of the memory available on your computer.

The Good

The most important aspect of RAM Medic is that it is free. The built-in process manager, though it is pretty simple, is a very handy tool that functions impeccably.

The Bad

Nothing to object to RAM Medic, but the surplus of luggage that comes with it is really a pain. I am talking about Registry Medic, an application of the same publisher that is installed with the discussed program. Besides the fact that it is version 3.0 (version 5 is out for some time now), it does absolutely nothing as the restrictions prevent it to take major actions.

The most annoying part is that you cannot uninstall it from Add/Remove Programs and you can either attempt a manual uninstall or eliminate RAM Medic in order to rid it off your computer.

The Truth

There are no risks while running RAM Medic and it behaves exactly like it should. It frees up the locked memory and improves the performance of your PC.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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