1). Start any application, say Word. Open some large
documents.
2). Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open Windows Task Manager and
click Processes tab and sort the list in descending order on Mem Usage. You
will notice that WINWORD.EXE will be somewhere at the top, using multiple MBs
of memory.
3). Now switch to Word and simply minimize it. (Don't use
the Minimize All Windows option of the task bar).
4). Now go back to the Windows Task Manager and see where
WINWORD.EXE is listed. Most probably you will not find it at the top. You will
typically have to scroll to the bottom of the list to find Word. Now check out
the amount of RAM it is using. Surprised? The memory utilization has reduced by
a huge amount.
5). Minimize each application that you are currently not
working on by clicking on the Minimize button & you can increase the amount
of available RAM by a substantial margin. Depending upon the number and type of
applications you use together, the difference can be as much as 50 percent of
extra RAM.
In any
multitasking system, minimizing an application means that it won't be utilized
by the user right now. Therefore, the OS automatically makes the application
use virtual memory & keeps bare minimum amounts of the code in physical
RAM.
