Best way to make use of all my ram?

I have 4 GB of ram installed on my lappy of which 3.5 gb is useable... I have a widget on my sidebar that shows my ram useage from time to time, and I'm always using approx 30% with aero and object dock and sidebar always running. I have 4 gb of ram and my hard drive is frequently being accessed whether it's superfetch, indexing (which I recently disabled). Is there anyway to force the comp to use more of the ram which I paid for?

 

I have vista home premium 32 bit....

 

. just want to clarify for myself - u do not want to see ur hard disk being accessed at any time unless the ram usage hits (let us say) 90%?

cheers ...

 

something like that would be nice, although I think the page file will be used somewhat frequently? You think I should just disable the page file to make better use of the ram?

 

you think it's just because the ram isn't "gamer quality"? I kinda put budget ram in there... but I ran ram tests and it works fine...

 

. u have vista, ur ram/process management is already in good hand
. i would just leave ur comp alone unless u notice performance degradation.
. i personally would never run a windows comp without a pagefile, not with current XP and Vista
. if u want to see ur ram/process always being used, try Folding@Home - this app would love to have someone providing free system service

cheers ...

 

What's this folding@home? I tried searching for it, but the stupid "websense" is blocking it...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

http://folding.stanford.edu/

hopefully websense wont block the wiki link atleast

 

"gamer quality" RAM is mostly BS, when it comes to laptops. Don't worry about that.

 

Play crysis while encoding 1080p videos?

 

keep superfetch on

 

Upgrade to Vista 64

Open lots of programs and do 10 things a once. Watch videos while you download, Fold@home, Encode 1080p videos, play crysis ect

If i were you i wouldnt have gone beyond 2 gigs unless i am like an engineer or a heavy programmer or even a gamer

 

Curious.. does Dell have appropriate 64 bit drivers for your XPS? If so.. you should consider switching it to 64 bit. I did for my T61 and I am really happy with it.

 

Run a lot of VM's..

 

You are already getting the use out of that 3.5GB of RAM! ALL of it... Yes, memory resource monitors will only show a little bit of your RAM, but this is because these programs do not count window's CACHE. open task manager (Alt-ctrl-del - task manager) click on performance...under PHYSICAL memory it'll have "TOTAL, CACHED, FREE"....notice that total does not equal cached + free...the rest is your so called 'used RAM' that applications are using.

That 'cached' part is that you are paying for...Vista is very good at keeping all of your RAM full with stuff that you have used or are likely to use, hence, your ACTUAL free ram, is usually very low, because vista keeps common stuff close at hand.

So, don't worry about it! Vista is helping your computer run smoothly and more quickly with that extra ram even when you aren't running a lot of programs.