In a message dated 12/19/00 10:54:46 AM, webmaster@... writes:
I don't think that the largest free block has something to do with
it.
On our Macs here until I added gobs more RAM to them, we would notice that
the Finder became EXTREMELY slow to redraw the Desktop if we had opened so
many apps that the Largest Free Block was very small (1-2 MB or less).
But when you've got 100 MB free, and have always had at least that much
there's no danger that the System Heap doesn't have room to grow some more I
don't think.
Even when my computer is slow, the largest unused block is as
big as a 100MB of RAM. When you look at About this Computer and see
how much RAM applications take, the Mac OS is one of those and its
progress bar is entirely filled. I remember from experience that
when the bar is full and that it refuses to change, my computer
slows down and is more crash prone.
The System Heap is dynamic, and always shows "nearly full" if I recall
correctly. The bar gets longer as needed, or if it's already the longest one
the scale of it shrinks
Of course "managing" that huge chunk of RAM is a different issue, and this
may be what affects a slowdown.
Cheers
Roger
