Dock 'restarts' and all windows pop up.

[T-Man]

Has anyone else had this happen and know why??? Its happened to me like 4 times in the last 20 minutes. Is it because I have too many windows open? Or could it have anything to do with needing more RAM?

[dragonsgames]

What are you running? You might be running a bad app or something. Or you need more RAM, how much RAM do you have? How many apps are running? What are you running?

[T-Man]

I have 512MB RAM. Last night I probably had 11/13 windows down there and a couple more open. (What can I say, people IM me too often.) I have 8 down there now with one open. And I'm running is 3 Safaris(one with 8 tabs), I had the System Profiler(About this Mac>More info) and iChats buddy list minimzed with 3 iChat windows open when all this happened. There was also Mail, and TextEdit. And your app for the server. (I can upload stuff using it...)And, iTunes might've been open one of the first times.

So there was:
-Safari(x3)
-System Profiler
-iChat Buddy List
-iChats(x3)
-Mail
-TextEdit
-D.G. Server
-iTunes

I think the problem is that I need more RAM because I have to many windows open. :o

Timm

[T-Man]

And, there were a few Finder Windows open.

[dragonsgames]

Does it only happen when you have a lot of windows open.

[T-Man]

Either then, or when my computer is slow, and then its slower because of all the windows. I also had Garage Band open during all this, which slows my Mac a lot.

[dragonsgames]

Must be the RAM. I have 1GB RAM :D

[T-Man]

Mmm...good for you. Have you ever used G.B.? Is it slow.

[dragonsgames]

Game Boy? I mean GigaByte. I don't have a GameBoy for a RAM..

[T-Man]

Yeah....anyway, the PowerBooks work with certain RAM? Or could I take 128MB out of a computer somewhere in the house?

(All though DealRAM doesnt have a bad price[to me] for their RAM. :))

[dragonsgames]

They have their own RAM. At least the iBooks do. This thread is still on topic :rolleyes:

[T-Man]

And its got another .5-2 pages before we start talking about games....

[dragonsgames]

Let's try to keep it on topic, for once... :)

[T-Man]

Yes...you know anything aboout my English PB speaking Spanish? (See my other thread soon to switch to French in this forum :D)

[dragonsgames]

What? What do you mean?

[T-Man]

See this forum, its got TxTEdit and Spanish in the title. :)

[dragonsgames]

What? No it doesn't... :(

[T-Man]

I just posted it before you made all these other threads go over it! :)

[dragonsgames]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah

[T-Man]

Do i throw your soda at you in the wrong thread? You cant fire me! I did this willingly! (I had no choice anyway) Is it ok if I go do stuff, like homework, off of 1SRC, Master?

[dragonsgames]

No
NO
NO
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[T-Man]

Too bad!I might be back later...Master...

[dragonsgames]

You better be back

[BobHarris]

Either then, or when my computer is slow, and then its slower because of all the windows. I also had Garage Band open during all this, which slows my Mac a lot.
Garage Band wants lots of memory. I would suggest that if you want to do anything serious with Garage Band, you get more memory. If you are just experimenting with Garage Band, then quit from it when you are not using it. You might also consider quiting unessential apps when playing with Garage Band so there is more memory and CPU available for Garage Band.

The thing to do is first look at /var/vm from the terminal

ls -l /var/vm

This will tell you how much disk space is being taken up by swap files, which is the overflow of memory. This will indicate the peak amount of overflow, not your current memory usage.

If you want to see if what you are currently doing is placing a demand on memory, then use the Activity Monitor and watch the pagein/pageout values as you do things like switch between windows and/or tabs. If the pagein/pageout values go wild, then you are most likely forcing stuff out of memory a lot.

Trying to figure out if you really need more memory is like trying to read tea leaves. it is not an exact science.

However, if you have the cash, then more memory never hurts. But over spending on memory if you don't need it, and especially if the money would be better used to pay bills, is not a good thing either.

Buying memory is best to use a 3rd party vendor, such as curcial.com or search for a vendor at dealram.com.

Bob Harris

[dragonsgames]

Bob is right. Almighty Bob :D

[BobHarris]

I have 512MB RAM. Last night I probably had 11/13 windows down there and a couple more open. (What can I say, people IM me too often.) I have 8 down there now with one open. And I'm running is 3 Safaris(one with 8 tabs), I had the System Profiler(About this Mac>More info) and iChats buddy list minimzed with 3 iChat windows open when all this happened. There was also Mail, and TextEdit. And your app for the server. (I can upload stuff using it...)And, iTunes might've been open one of the first times.

So there was:
-Safari(x3)
-System Profiler
-iChat Buddy List
-iChats(x3)
-Mail
-TextEdit
-D.G. Server
-iTunes

I think the problem is that I need more RAM because I have to many windows open. :o

Timm
I intended to add in my previous post, that I have 640MB (only 128MB more than you), and I have had more windows and tabs open than that as well as half a dozen apps. Right now I have 11 windows open, 16 tabs open in Firefox (I'm typing this in one of them). Right now I have 5 apps open, but I've had more in the past (Firefox, iTunes, MT-Newswatcher, Terminal, iChat, DragThing), plus I have some background utilities running, like MenuMeters, SlimBatteryMonitor, Gmail Status, Meteorologist, OSXvnc, SleepWatcher, MissingSync, wClock, and Xkeys). So unless the Apps you are running are really placing a heavy demand on your memory/CPU, then 512MB should be OK for most of the stuff you are running except maybe Garage Band (as a serious app).

Bob Harris

[dragonsgames]

Quit GarageBand, it should help

(Hey, you are using the D.G. Server app! ;))

[T-Man]

Me? Or were you talking to Bob? I couldnt get stuff to upload thru it, but its good for viewing. :)

[dragonsgames]

You still can't upload? Try a very small file and see if it will work...

[T-Man]

When I click 'choose', the window doesnt pop up. I can upload in Safari. ;)

[eye_doc]

What would be too large a size for the swap file - mine is running at about 1 GB.

I have 512Mb - Should I buy more?

NB I don't have spare DIMM slot.

[BobHarris]

What would be too large a size for the swap file - mine is running at about 1 GB.

I have 512Mb - Should I buy more?

NB I don't have spare DIMM slot.
Figuring out if you need more RAM is like reading tea leaves. Noticing that you have swap files is the equivalent of noticing that there are tea leaves in the bottom of the cup. Sorry, I couldn't resist the analogy :)

You are almost always going to have some swap files. And the longer your system is up and running the more likely they are going to be larger. But they only tell you the peak amount of swap space needed since boot.

512MB is a comfortable amount of memory for doing things like surf'n the web, email, word processing, spread sheets, listening to iTunes, iPhoto picture viewing, minor picture editing from time to time, etc...

If money is no object, then feel free to get more RAM. But I dislike spending money for something I'm not going to use all that much, and especially if I have to take out some memory to put more in (like if I wanted to add more memory to my iBook, I would have to remove the 512MB card and figure out what to do with it; that annoys me for some reason :))

Anyway, the best way to see if more memoy would be useful is to either run the Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor -> System Memory tab, and watch the "Page ins/outs", WHILE doing something you think is slow because of memory.

If the pagein/pageout numbers go wild, for an extended period of time, then more memory would be useful.

If the pagein/pageout numbers just spin for a moment, then the are just doing their job and memory is not the problem.

NOTE: a page is 4096 bytes of memory. 256 pages is a megabyte of memory.

You can also use the Terminal and the command "vm_stat 10". This will leave a trail of pageins/pageouts on the screen so you can see the number over a period of time, where the 10 is gives the values every 10 seconds. And if you want to ignore the other stuff, try this command line:

vm_stat 10 | awk '{print $9, $10}'

And when looking at Pagein/Pageout numbers, the Pageout numbers are twice as expensive as the Pagein, so weight your analysis accordingly.

What you are looking for are extended periods of paging activity, and very large numbers of pages being moved in and out of memory. And remember to averge the pages over the 10 second period.

I can tell you that at the extreme edges, zero pages, means no extra memory needed. If you are paging constantly and with larger numbers, that more memory would be desirable.

The hard part is when you have just some paging, and the numbers are low to moderate. Just when is it too much paging and is that paging really affecting you.

Good Luck.
Bob Harris

[T-Man]

I have a thing on Dashboard, it says:

Swap files: 6
1536MB

.........

[dragonsgames]

T-Man, delete some Private Messages, I can't send any to you before you do :)

[T-Man]

And thanks Bob for everything, you sure know what you're doing...:)

[BobHarris]

And thanks Bob for everything, you sure know what you're doing...:)
No, I just sound like I do :rolleyes:

Bob Harris

[dragonsgames]

I sound like I don't and I do! :)

[T-Man]

:D

I keep skipping messages! Well, I have about another 20 messages to go before I need to selete more. :)

[dragonsgames]

Selete more? You have already seleted so many! :D

(Sorry, I had to :))

[T-Man]

Oh, duh! :D

[dragonsgames]

:D
Trix are for kids. But Spelling is for the the iliterate

[T-Man]

Uhhh.....OK. :)

[dragonsgames]

Speeling ies haerd

[T-Man]

I konw. did you haer aobut the tihng weehr you can sepel 'wrods' hewoevr you want? Its buscee the mnid rades wrdos as wohels and not lteter by ltteer. :)