Countless people have complained and still are complaining that Windows Vista takes up a quarter or a half of their memory. And here is the solution: do nothing.

Yes, don’t do anything about Vista’s memory consumption. It’s actually a good thing. Vista has a feature called SuperFetch. What it does is it preloads your frequently used applications in the background so they will start up faster. This is what’s taking most of that extra RAM. It’s not a bad thing as some people think. This is why Vista is actually faster than XP if your computer has 2GB of RAM or above.

SuperFetch releases that extra RAM if you need it. If you’re running a memory-intensive application or playing a game, Vista will instantly clear what it has preloaded and let your active application or game use the RAM. It’s a very smart and efficient way of memory management.

When I upgraded from 2GB to 4GB of RAM, I noticed a huge increase in system responsiveness and application and game start-up time. Photoshop CS3 takes 2-3 seconds to start. Vista took about 35% RAM on idle with 2GB, and now it takes about 30% on idle with 4GB. I wish it took more of my RAM to preload stuff.

Give SuperFetch a chance and don’t complain about it. It’s there to make your computer faster. It will give you back your RAM if you need it, you have nothing to be worried about.

Popularity: 51% [?]