Activity Monitor: What Is Free, Wired, Active, Inactive, and Used Memory in RAM

Understanding Memory Use with Activity Monitor (from MacMost.com).

You can use Activity Monitor to see how your Mac is using memory. But what do free, active, inactive and wired mean? How about page ins and page outs? Plus, learn to use them to figure out if you need more memory.

"Free memory" is the amount of memory you have available in system memory or RAM.

"Wired memory" is the hardware memory that your computer needs to use at a minimum to operate.

"Active memory" is the amount of memory that is being used in RAM right now.

"Inactive memory" is an amount of memory that might have just been used

"Used memory" is the total of all used memory -- Wired, Active, and Inactive

"Free memory" plus "Used memory" equals the size of your installed RAM memory.

If you see a lot of "Page outs", that means that your RAM is overloaded and you computer needs to use a lot of Virtual Memory -- swapping memory on the hard drive.

"Page ins" is memory being used in RAM. Page outs -- memory from outside the System Memory or RAM memory.

"Swap used" is how much virtual memory is being used.

VM size is the disk space available in your hard drive. The amount can be used to swap memory as needed to run and application or process.

New Samsung Galaxy Makes Buz That Makes Apple Appear to Be Following

Samsung introduced its new smartphone, the Galaxy S-4 at New York's Radio City Music Hall on Thursday. The phone is seen as a contender to potentially become the top-selling smartphone.

Biggest news is Air Gesture -- touchless control of the screen.

Larger, sharper screen -- a 5-inch (130 mm) Pentile RG–BG Full HD Super AMOLED screen with 441 pixels per inch.

Front and Rear cameras can work simultaneously. The rear camera is a  a 13-megapixel back camera.


The Galaxy S4 uses Google's Android mobile operating system with its custom TouchWiz "Nature UX" graphical user interface (GUI).  The Galaxy S4version sold in the United States will contain a 1.9 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 APQ8064T processor.

First, it will be interesting to see how many complaints of accidental commands arising from use of this phone.  Imagine your fingers accidentally dialing someone at midnight when your putting your phone in the charger. Hmmm ... Apple iPhone 4s and now the Samsung Galaxy S4. It's a palindrome, sort of.

Official website ...

samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxys4

Chromebook Pixel High-End Laptop for Heavy Internet Users, but Not Photoshop Users

Google has unveiled a new touchscreen laptop computer. The Chromebook Pixel unveiled Thursday includes a nearly 13-inch display screen that responds to the touch or swipe of a finger.

Google introduced the Pixel on Thursday, a new version of its Chromebook laptops that store everything online without desktop software. A Wi-Fi model ($1,300) will ship next week, and a LTE cellular network version ($1450) is scheduled to ship in April.

Chromebooks initially hit the market at $250.

Google designed and manufactured the expensive version with a touch screen.

Insert a camera’s memory card, and photos upload to Google Plus. User can share photos with a click. Using Quickoffice, a start-up Google acquired last year, users can open, edit and send Word or Excel files created on the Chromebook.

Incentives
Google is offering one terabyte of Google Drive storage for three years with the Pixel.

Storage
32 GB solid state or 64 GB with the LTE model

Screen
12.85"
2560 x 1700 (239 ppi)
3:2 (1:5:1) aspect ratio
400 nit brightness
178° viewing angle
Multi-touch
Gorilla Glass (trademark for an alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass manufactured by U.S. glassmaker Corning. Engineered for a combination of thinness, lightness, and damage-resistance)

Webcam, 720p HD, integrated
Touchpad, clickable, etched glass

3.5 mm combo headphone/mic jack
3 built-in microphones
Integrated DSP for noise cancellation
stereo speakers

Two USB 2.0 ports

Mini DisplayPort

SD/MMC card reader


802.11a/b/g/n
Dual-band (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz)
2×2 MIMO

Bluetooth 3.0

Battery, 59 Wh (5 hours active use)

1 TB Cloud storage for three years

100 MB/month free Verizon data transfer in LTE model with LTE modem

See also ...
Google search chromebook pixel

Can Apple TV Be Connected to Regular Monitor with HDMI Instead of HDTV Television?

A user can use an HDMI cable to directly connect an Apple TV to any monitor with an HDMI port. As of July 2012, OS X Mountain Lion permits wireless mirroring of a Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to any Apple TV. The monitor must be HDCP ready to support the connection. HDCP or High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation designed to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as data travels across connections. Connections used include DisplayPort (DP), Digital Visual Interface (DVI), and High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), as well as less popular, or now defunct, protocols like Gigabit Video Interface (GVIF), and Unified Display Interface (UDI).

 HDCP is commonly incorrectly called  High-Definition Copyright Protection.

New Facebook Graph Search Tool Is in Beta; Focuses on People, Photos (by Location or Topic), Places and Interests

Facebook has announced that it is unveiling and tool to find content and data on Facebook, known as Graph Search, but it is only in beta, and requires that users sign up for a waiting list. Graph search is immediately available to a limited number of Facebook users — in the “thousands, and will gradually extended to the rest.

Graph Search will appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. When a user starts typing to search for something, Graph Search will make suggestions of searches users area looking to perform. Once a user selects the search it will return results on a page that a user can further customize and filter (for things like specific timeframes).

Facebook programmers have been working on the new search feature for about a year. The first version  of Graph Search focuses on four main areas: people, photos (by location or topic), places and interests. The new search feature will facilitate searches of LinkedIn for jobs, Yelp for restaurants, Match for dates. Facebook has been collecting data on users, and is betting that friends will prefer recommendations from friends on restaurants, services and products, more than advice from a media food critic or a stranger on a message board. Initially the data mining that will be used come from users' pictures, likes, and check-ins, but not their status updates. Instagram photos will not initially be part of the Graph Search database.

For data outside of Facebook, Microsoft's Bing search engine will be resourced to help find information on the Internet.

Graph Search also potentially undermines the privacy protections in Facebook’s advertising model by indirectly reaching target population segments, which the American Civil Liberties Union believes can allow advertisers to easily identify Facebook users whose publicly-available data fits a specific profile.

Top 5 Windows 7 Tips from Dylan Combs: Speed Up Aero Peek, Run Command Prompt from Any Folder and More

Top 5 Tips For Windows 7 Optimization. Get the most out of your operating system with these and more tips.

Apple Mac Keyboard Combination Commands During Startup

Here are some helpful keyboard combinations that are helpful for Mac troubleshooting (The command key is the key with the cloverleaf symbol). The following keyboard combinations should be performed immediately after Mac power on or Restart ...

Steve Jobs introduces the phrase "Digital Lifestyle" and the "Digital Hub" strategy at Macworld 2001

On January 9, 2001, Steve Jobs gave one of his greatest Macworld keynote presentations.

Steve Jobs introduced at the January 9, 2001 keynote ...

The original version of Mac OS X;

The original SuperDrive;

The original widescreen PowerBook G4;

The original versions of iTunes and iDVD.

Windows Upgrade Demonstration Video: Every Version from MS-DOS 1.0 to Windows XP

Andy's Tech Experiments Blog presents a video presentation covering an experiment involving an upgrade of every major version of Windows.

According to Andy, the whole procedure took 3 days, of which approximately 12 hours was spent doing the actual installing. The remaining time was spent trying to obtain valid copies of windows. Windows 98 was installed by renaming system files to trick it into upgrading.

See more details  ...
Andy's Tech Experiments Blog Chain of fools: Upgrading through every version of Windows

TRANSCRIPT: "Hello, I'm Macintosh"

The Original 1984 Macintosh Introduction: A magic moment when Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh computer, released it from its bag, and let it talk.


TRANSCRIPT: "Hello, I'm Macintosh"

Hello, I'm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag.

As accustomed as I am to public speaking, I'd like to share with you a maxim I thought of the first time I met an IBM mainframe: NEVER TRUST A COMPUTER YOU CAN'T LIFT!"

Obviously, I can talk, but right now I'd like to sit back and listen. So, it is with considerable pride that I introduce a man who's been like a father to me ... STEVE JOBS.