Memory footprint - how are we doing?

dunno if I asked this before, lol, scuse me if I did, but maybe it's time to check in with an update.

With some more tweaking, removing redundant shortcuts, help files, moving dlls to my cf card, I have managed to get my storage memory use down to 1976kb. Some items won't co-operate, like the portrait bitmaps, so they eat precious ram. Anyone manage to move these bitmaps from memory to cf?

I *think* I have everthing that most users would ever need installed, Calligrapher, NF3, multiple navigation programs, Beta/GS players, Acrobat, TextMaker, Cash Organiser, hpc notes and spell, Wordbook, Resco Explorer & Photoviewer, Conduits artist. There's a whole bunch of run from cf stuff also like games, Warface Inc, SC2000 and utils that installed fine to Cf at first go.

I find it surprising when people complain of having too little ram to run a couple of large programs concurrently. A little bit of time spent to manage hpc memory pays off exponentially.

Wow.. I'm sitting at 3924KB (edit, I had the Citrix client installed without Citrix server on my home PC so it was rather useless) in use for Storage memory, with 10752KB allocated. I've got 21924KB allocated for Program Memory, and it seems to be more than sufficient for whatever I've been using it for.

I've been moving games and programs to CF, but I felt it was a better idea to keep everything really essential stored in main ram - both to cut down on CF reads/writes as to keep them available if I want to switch the CF card for any reason.

Edited by corporate 2005-07-18 10:51 PM

since i have 64 MB hpc's i couldn't care less about this topic... 16 MB for storage and 48 for program ram is fine (default setting on a MP900 after a hard reset, and i never have to change it.. and i use a similar setting on the 728 too)
but even when i had a jornada 720 as my main hpc (32 MB ram), i was too lazy to do these mods. i just installed most of the stuff on CF and that was it. i didn't mind 6-7 MB of storage ram occupied.
btw, my nav program (destinator) won't run in CF but i no longer mind it, and i have even netfront in ram, because it's just faster this way
but basically your ideas are good, i think not everyone knows about proper ram management, spread the word

you don't have to be afraid, you can read the CF as many times you want.. it is the write times you may want to be careful about. the switching is a good reason though. i do so with my essential apps for the same reason

I debated the read/write issue of CF cards but decided more free hpc ram is paramount. CF cards are so cheap now and once I upgrade to a 1 or 2 gb card (to hold many maps) I can't ever see a need to swap cards. If I wasn't getting into navigation and maps my current 256mb card would keep me going a long time. It hasn't been out of the machine for months and is only half full. I have 2 songs I like and no videos on my CF card, so I may be an exception. But, I have a 20gb jukebox if I want lots of music on the go. Said jukebox has USB so doubles as mass storage for me.

The small amount of extra time reading an app from the CF card is negligible for me. OTOH, my backups are tiny, which means I have many iterations around, and restores take less than a minute.

Yes, I'm OC. I hard-reset and restore every couple days, sometimes multiple times in a day if I'm experimenting with ppc apps. Why not, it takes so little effort? And I know when I'm done no ghosts are left in the machine.

One day for laffs I deleted the entire registry after a hard reset. To my surprise only 400kb of ram was used! Further to that, most everything still worked. I was pressed for time and never followed through with that experiment.

So, I'm a real fanatic trying to reduce the memory footprint. If not for portrait and CE agenda my footprint might be down around 1200kb.

well i was a little fanatic too about reducing storage ram.. of course not as much as you.. i was too lazy to do the hacking and just didn't allow for much free storage ram i was like that even after i got my 728 with 64 MB ram. then one day i suddenly realized, looking at 50 MB free program ram - why do i need to spare ram? since then netfront etc is in ram... and i no longer look at free storage / program ram.. i set myself really free
your experiment about the registry is really interesting what didn't work btw?
ehehe another thing.. restore on a jornada 72x is very fast from CF - even with 10 MB.. only backup is slow

I don't worry much about my E200 memory. 64mb seems to be the magic threshold where worries vanish

I don't remember what didn't work after I nuked the registry. Almost everything I ran created the missing keys. I think I just got tired of creating shortcuts. Amazing how much of the registry is fluff.