Optimize RAM Video
Optimize RAM Video Transcript
>> I have a problem. I run way too many programs on my computer. Yeah, I know, even two gigs of RAM sometimes isn't enough for me. But I know a way to squeeze more speed out of my memory. I'm Tom Merritt from CNET.com. On Today's Insider Secret I'll show you how to use a tiny, free program called RAM Booster to speed up your PC. ^M00:00:20 [ music ] ^M00:00:32 Let's say this sponge is RAM, and the, all this water is the programs eating away at your RAM. Essentially what RAM Booster does is squeezes that sponge a little, freeing up space so other programs can use it. First you need to know how much RAM you have, and that's harder than just looking at your sponge. Here's how to do it. Right click on My Computer, select Properties. You should see your amount of RAM right there. That wasn't so hard after all. Now for some math. Now wait a minute, this really isn't that hard. RAM Booster counts everything in megabytes. If you have five hundred twelve megabytes of RAM, you're golden, it's all in megabytes. But if you have one or two gigabytes, just remember, there's a thousand twenty four megabytes in a gigabyte. So one gig is ten twenty four meg, two gigs, two thousand forty eight. Okay, so let's launch RAM Booster. First thing you'll see is a monitor, very useful on its own, it shows you how much free RAM you have, and what your CPU usage is. Now let me show you how to use it to free up RAM when your memory gets full, squeeze out some of that water. Go to Edit, then Options. This is where your math comes in. The auto optimization level sets the low point your RAM has to dip below before RAM Booster starts swinging in and freeing up memory. Set it too high, like at the eighty percent mark for instance, and the program will actually slow your system down by constantly trying to liberate RAM. The developers recommend keeping your setting at about ten percent or less of your total RAM. So for my two gig, I set it at two hundred four meg, that's ten percent. This section here tells it how much RAM to try and free up, and a little goes a long way. So I'm gonna put mine at a hundred and see how it goes. You can find the best level for you, but you probably shouldn't put it at more than half your available RAM. This next option is a nice safeguard. It tells RAM Booster to only try to free up RAM if the CPU is processing below a certain level. I'm gonna leave mine at ten percent. Now if you wanted to turn that off, just put it at zero, turns it right off. Just two more settings to look at. Interval to refresh is how often the program updates RAM usage. Leave it at one second, unless RAM Booster itself is slowing down your machine by running too much. Times to retry optimization tells RAM Booster how many times in a row to keep trying to claim back RAM if it fails the first time. Your chances of success on a retry are small, so leave it at a low number. Next, if you want RAM Booster to automatically optimize your PC, check that box. Now press Done. If you don't want auto optimization, you can choose to optimize only when you notice a problem. Just press the optimize button any time you want to manually optimize. And that's it, you can tweak your RAM performance to your heart's content. Want to thank Jessica Dolcort [assumed spelling] at CNET's download.com for the tip-off on this program. She also reminds us that no utility can actually replace installing more RAM. So if you need it, buy it, and you can still tweak it with RAM Booster later. That's it for this edition of Insider Secret, I'm Tom Merritt for CNET.com. Now if I only had a RAM Booster for my brain. ^M00:03:41 [ music ]
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RAMBooster is a great, simple utility to free up more of your computer's available RAM.
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Motion City Soundtrack: "Hold Me Down"
The way it works, everyone likes the first record better. You're a music fan, presumably, so you probably understand the idea here that, when placed in historical context, a band's initial statement to the world is often seen as its most lasting. Motion City Soundtrack began in Minneapolis in 1999. Two years ago, they released their first album, I Am The Movie, crawled inside a van for seemingly the end of eternity and shot a video with their friends back home for "The Future Freaks Me Out," a loud and instantly enjoyable anthem that has become such an undeniable apex at the band's live shows that it is no longer sung by singer/guitarist Justin Pierre as much as it is sung back at him. But as ubiquitous as it became, the song perfectly captured Motion City's allure. Irresistible and unhinged, "The Future Freaks Me Out" was a reference point for what was to come with Commit This To Memory, ironic considering they wrote the song in mere hours and it almost didn't even make it onto their debut. "Two weeks before we went in, [guitarist Joshua Cain] played the part and I sang those words and that's what came out," Pierre says now in amazement. "It was completely random. But that's how we work. It's funny when there's talk about how this record could 'make or break us.'" He laughs. "This band has always gone on its gut instinct." Last year, by way of the unrelenting schedule they kept behind I Am The Movie, the band was asked to join Blink-182 on a tour of Europe and, then, Japan. Somewhere backstage and in between, bassist Mark Hoppus modestly mentioned to the group that he was interested in pursuing production work once Blink took a necessary pause later in the year. Though he didn't know it at the time, Hoppus had just found his first client. "We thought of it almost as a joke,'" Cain recalls. "But on our last day of tour I asked him, point blank, 'Do you want to produce our record?' When he said, "Fuck yeah" I was like, 'Okay... can I get your phone number then?'" Stretching out in Los Angeles later that fall and occasionally propped up by some of their other famous friends, Commit This To Memory finds Motion City the sort of definitive record usually reserved for much later or---to really bring this full circle---slightly earlier in a band's career. "Everything Is Alright," the album's first single (with Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stumph and Limbeck's Rob MacLean and Patrick Carrie there in the background), isn't about writing off their past as much as it is putting a fine point to it. With Hoppus' encouragement, Pierre, alongside Cain, bassist Matthew Taylor, moogist Jesse Johnson and drummer Tony Thaxton have begun stepping back from---and outside of---their roles when necessary. "Any time we wanted to take a chance with Mark he would go for it," Cain recalls. "He was so supportive. He would always say, 'Your name is going to be a lot bigger on the front of the record than mine will be on the back.'" The relationship that they developed with Hoppus may have helped hone Motion City's uniquely and cinematic sound of sound but, more importantly, it encouraged them to open the windows and allow themselves room to breathe. The space inevitably allowed Pierre's charismatic personality the room it has long since needed. A former film school student who has always likened himself to a director first, a musician second, and now some fascinating form of the two, is projecting his own life here. Songs like the plaintive, near-ballad "Hold Me Down" and the incredibly candid "Resolution" are among the most personal that he has ever written. "I think I tried to be as honest as possible on this record," he stresses. "I was less inhibited on this one from hiding. In the last two years this was what was going on." While it's true that Commit This To Memory can trace itself incredibly close to Pierre's personal life, with repeated listens it's clearly more the work of five musicians, finding themselves and turning to one another. "We've learned the reality of what we were doing," Cain says humbly. "When we left [I Am The Movie producer] Ed Rose, we left with a record that was better than our band. So we went home and had to become that good." Which is otherwise what they've done. But really, it's also where all these rules about second records and inhuman expectations begin to reverse and turn in on themselves. Motion City should have been trying to outdo themselves this whole time with Commit This To Memory. They found themselves instead. "I really think we've achieved everything we can as human beings playing music," Pierre says with a slight hint of laughter. "Really, we just played in our own city, selling out a show at [First Avenue], which is where we saw all our favorite shows. And that was something that I've wanted to do since I was 14." In a way, Commit This To Memory recalls the lost indie heroes Cain and Pierre spent those formative years in Minneapolis poring over, but there's also a slight irony in the fact that this is the one record that seems destined to lead to their own version of this. "I would love to say that I don't care what people think," Pierre stresses. "But you know, I am like most people. I do hope people like it." Whatever you make of the second Motion City Soundtrack album is now left up to the songs you're currently holding onto. As for us? We couldn't possibly be any prouder.
Motion City Soundtrack: "Everything Is Alright"
The way it works, everyone likes the first record better. You're a music fan, presumably, so you probably understand the idea here that, when placed in historical context, a band's initial statement to the world is often seen as its most lasting. Motion City Soundtrack began in Minneapolis in 1999. Two years ago, they released their first album, I Am The Movie, crawled inside a van for seemingly the end of eternity and shot a video with their friends back home for "The Future Freaks Me Out," a loud and instantly enjoyable anthem that has become such an undeniable apex at the band's live shows that it is no longer sung by singer/guitarist Justin Pierre as much as it is sung back at him. But as ubiquitous as it became, the song perfectly captured Motion City's allure. Irresistible and unhinged, "The Future Freaks Me Out" was a reference point for what was to come with Commit This To Memory, ironic considering they wrote the song in mere hours and it almost didn't even make it onto their debut. "Two weeks before we went in, [guitarist Joshua Cain] played the part and I sang those words and that's what came out," Pierre says now in amazement. "It was completely random. But that's how we work. It's funny when there's talk about how this record could 'make or break us.'" He laughs. "This band has always gone on its gut instinct."
Motion City Soundtrack: "Hold Me Down"
The way it works, everyone likes the first record better. You're a music fan, presumably, so you probably understand the idea here that, when placed in historical context, a band's initial statement to the world is often seen as its most lasting. Motion City Soundtrack began in Minneapolis in 1999. Two years ago, they released their first album, I Am The Movie, crawled inside a van for seemingly the end of eternity and shot a video with their friends back home for "The Future Freaks Me Out," a loud and instantly enjoyable anthem that has become such an undeniable apex at the band's live shows that it is no longer sung by singer/guitarist Justin Pierre as much as it is sung back at him. But as ubiquitous as it became, the song perfectly captured Motion City's allure. Irresistible and unhinged, "The Future Freaks Me Out" was a reference point for what was to come with Commit This To Memory, ironic considering they wrote the song in mere hours and it almost didn't even make it onto their debut. "Two weeks before we went in, [guitarist Joshua Cain] played the part and I sang those words and that's what came out," Pierre says now in amazement. "It was completely random. But that's how we work. It's funny when there's talk about how this record could 'make or break us.'" He laughs. "This band has always gone on its gut instinct."
Motion City Soundtrack: "My Favorite Accident"
The way it works, everyone likes the first record better. You're a music fan, presumably, so you probably understand the idea here that, when placed in historical context, a band's initial statement to the world is often seen as its most lasting. Motion City Soundtrack began in Minneapolis in 1999. Two years ago, they released their first album, I Am The Movie, crawled inside a van for seemingly the end of eternity and shot a video with their friends back home for "The Future Freaks Me Out," a loud and instantly enjoyable anthem that has become such an undeniable apex at the band's live shows that it is no longer sung by singer/guitarist Justin Pierre as much as it is sung back at him. But as ubiquitous as it became, the song perfectly captured Motion City's allure. Irresistible and unhinged, "The Future Freaks Me Out" was a reference point for what was to come with Commit This To Memory, ironic considering they wrote the song in mere hours and it almost didn't even make it onto their debut. "Two weeks before we went in, [guitarist Joshua Cain] played the part and I sang those words and that's what came out," Pierre says now in amazement. "It was completely random. But that's how we work. It's funny when there's talk about how this record could 'make or break us.'" He laughs. "This band has always gone on its gut instinct."
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