iFreeMem Review and Giveaway

Posted by Greg Healy on 05/26/07 in Giveaways, Utilities

Whenever you feel your computer start to slow down, it is most likely because you are using up your memory. With a measly 512MB of memory, this is a situation I find myself in regularly. I usually have to quit a few programs or kill processes in order to gain back a few more precious megabytes.

Just recently, I came across an application called iFreeMem from Activata. The application claimed to be a â€œMemory Optimizerâ€. Being short on memory daily, I decided that I would give it a try. The results surprised me quite a bit.

The first time I opened iFreeMem I was greeted with a window that showed how much free, inactive, wired, and active memory I had. As usual, my free memory was the lowest number, skipping between 4 and 7MB. After clicking on â€œOptimize Memory,â€ I was pleased to see that number shoot up to between 145 and 150MB. Just look at the comparison in the screenshots below.

iFreeMem in Action

It only takes about 5 seconds for iFreeMem to re-organize your memory, so it is not a lengthy process. For anyone who runs such memory hungry applications such as Photoshop, or Final Cut Pro, iFreeMem could really help free up your Mac. When switching back to an application for the first time after optomizing, you may experience a short lag as the app claims back some memory. If you think iFreeMem may be an application you would be interested in, there is a 15 day trial for you to test it out. If it seems like an app you could use, head on over to Activata and pick yourself up a copy. iFreeMem is shareware and available for $8USD.

iFreeMem developer, John Wylie, was generous enough to give away 3 licenses of iFreeMem along with this review. To be entered in the draw, just answer the following question:

Q: How could/is iFreeMem useful for you?

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39 Comment(s)

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Maya Gaarda said on

May 26th, 2007 at 10:07 am

I would use it when I finish working on image/video programs that make my iBook run slow, in order to start quickly doing some light tasks (surfing the internet, chatting with my pals…) Image software are always a great memory eater.

Gassia said on

May 26th, 2007 at 10:48 am

I am a student and work a lot with Microsoft Office and Neooffice, which really slow down my macbook. Of course for my researches, I need to have my browser open too. Aside from that I just have to listen to music while working. I can’t afford to buy new memory for now, so this prog would help me!

Gabriel said on

May 26th, 2007 at 10:50 am

I do a fair amount of digital media (video, audio, photos, print, web) work which involves quite a few memory hungry applications. Unfortunately I only have the measly 512 mb of memory. Having iFreemem would really help to speed up my mac and help me impress my clients.

m@ said on

May 26th, 2007 at 11:14 am

I am the Mac user in a Windows office. I am slightly ashamed to admit that I am the boss’ son. It has its perks, but I am assigned to doing a lot of different jobs. Since I wear so many hats in the company, I feel much more comfortable on my Mac to do design work for brochures and fliers. Unfortunately, corporate applications are still all Windows based. I am required to run Windows in Parallels at the same time. That monster can eat up memory quick. I’m tired of the Windows users looking over my shoulder and seeing how slow things run and thinking it’s an Apple thing.

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Jonathan Bloom said on

May 26th, 2007 at 11:19 am

It would help me either when using Final Cut, rendering a video in QuickTime, or switching to Parallels. All three eat up a ton of memory.

-2

Sylvain said on

May 26th, 2007 at 11:46 am

I use Photoshop and Illustrator quite extensively, and they always seem to suck memory really fast, that program would definitely help me a lot gaining speed and time !

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bandersnatch said on

May 26th, 2007 at 12:49 pm

I use FireFox and visit Myspace often. The fact that FireFox suffers from memory leaks and Myspacers love to embed fifty million clips would make this app a Godsend.

-2

Julien Stockwell said on

May 26th, 2007 at 12:58 pm

For me, this could really help out in Garageband. Right now I have a mac mini, and it only has 512 mb or ram. When using Garageband I often have 4 or 5 other applications open to support it and if I am making a soundtrack for a movie there’s even more. From the trial, this looks like a very useful utility, which has already saved me a lot of time.

-1

Sjaq said on

May 26th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

I would use it for everyday computing, because i’m a multi-tasker.
I always have at least 5-6 programs open wich is doable on a iMac G5 but when i used a demo of iFreeMem and that speeds it up massively. Also I often use Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.

Siggy said on

May 26th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

My second job during the evenings requires the use of Adobe After Effects 7, Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Quicktime 7. I also run Windows XP via Parallels for apps that are Windows only. From what you have reported in your review, iFreemem would be of great help. Most notably, it seems iFreemem could alleviate the 20 second wait while switching from After Effects to another app right after a full render of my motion graphics project. On my MacBook Pro, 2.17 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 128 MB video, you would probably assume no such need for a nify utility such as iFreemem. In reality, After Effects and Photoshop are not Universal, so they make use of Rosetta in a helpful but incredibly frustrating and time-consuming way.

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Josh said on

May 26th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

It would allow me to quit running periodical cron jobs that take MUCH longer than any five seconds to simply gain my RAM back. Leave any application open for longer than half an hour and you are likely to have no “free” RAM left and a lot of “inactive” RAM. I have 1.25GB of RAM for my 12″ PowerBook and it seems wonderful until you play around with Photoshop and Firefox and Dreamweaver all at the same time. This would be a nifty little application and I was wondering why I hadn’t seen something like this sooner!

A. R. said on

May 26th, 2007 at 4:23 pm

I would use iFreeMem is many different circumstances. First of all, I’m trying to learn Photoshop, and I’m not using CS3 - running CS2 under Rosetta is a huge memory hog! It would also be useful when I’m trying to use Word and Firefox at the same time - that’ enough for my computer to spiral into the endless rainbow spinning wheel of doom.

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steve said on

May 26th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

I do a lot of web development, meaning I usually have Dreamweaver CS3, Photoshop CS3, and Firefox open at the same time 99% of the time I do work. Sometimes I use Illustrator CS3 too.
Also, I tend to test the pages I make out in windows too, and rather reboot into Vista, I use Parallels. Just using parallels eats up all my ram, so having it and any of the CS3 software open at the same time is a nightmare.

Also, I can’t do work in silence, so I always have iTunes running in the background on party shuffle, or one of my play lists depending on my mood.

Chris A. said on

May 26th, 2007 at 6:40 pm

I’m a musician and have plenty of audio applications on my system that hog huge amounts of memory and processor juice. Before running an audio app such as Digidesigns Pro Tools, usually I would need to restart my Macbook Pro in order to gain back lost memory space. With iFreeMem, all I would need to do is run the app and that’s it! No more time wasted waiting for my computer to boot up!

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shadownight said on

May 26th, 2007 at 6:52 pm

When I use Safari for a long time and it takes up nearly half my RAM, this would come in very handy!

Steven said on

May 26th, 2007 at 7:10 pm

I have a powerbook 12″ with 640 mb of ram (which used to be fine…4 years ago). I do photoshop work, run 3D rendering programs (formz) and CAD programs like vectorworks/autocad. I basically have to kill every single application expect the one i’m using when I get into these memory intensive progams. Until I can upgrade i’d love to free up so more memory to multitask better.

josh said on

May 26th, 2007 at 10:47 pm

ifreemem would be a very useful app for me.. not only could i render in final cut and use photoshop at the same time with greater speeds, but i could also watch up to 3 or porno movies at the same time whilst my usb massager gives me a back rub

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-5

uh huh said on

May 26th, 2007 at 11:20 pm

Seems like a good idea, but what are the potential ramifications of manipulating RAM?

As an aside…is anyone suspicious of the comments on this particular thread? They seem redundant, blatantly contrived or worse -manufatured.

Richard said on

May 27th, 2007 at 1:05 am

It could be useful for allowing me to use iPhoto on my struggling Mac Mini (G4 512MB RAM) without needing to take a 5 minute break while the app opens.

Jens Bonk said on

May 27th, 2007 at 1:47 am

Sounds like a nice program !
I have to admit that my main interest is running CrossOver and EVE Online better. It works on my MacBook, but it stutters very often. More memory (with the shared memory gfx card) would really help and I don’t want to restart my Mac everytime I want to play.
And no, I don’t think the comments seem manufactured. Esp. not the one with the porno flicks

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Chuck Cheeze said on

May 27th, 2007 at 1:51 am

Well, you see, I have an 18 month old and another one on the way- a nagging wife, large house payment and I work about 18 hour days. Let me tell you, the wife can talk to me and tell me something to do over and over and it goes in one ear and out the other- I just don’t even hear her most of the time. Actually I hear her, but I don’t remember that I hear her. My memory is all used up. I’d really like to get a syringe full of iFreeMem and jack it right into my arm so I can just get it straight- did we need bread from the store or to store the bread in the pantry? Please give me a license!

-1

Dubious said on

May 27th, 2007 at 3:02 am

OK so youve got 85 cents. 25 nickels is a lot of change. So you “optimize” by manipulating yourself into 3 quarters and a dime. WOW you think, arent i clever! But guess what, youv’e still only got 85 cents.
MORE RAM folks! That’s the one TRUE solution. All this sort of stuff brings back memories of the good old “RAM Doublers” of the 90’s!

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Dubious said on

May 27th, 2007 at 3:04 am

oops i meant 17 nickels

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Toni said on

May 27th, 2007 at 3:27 am

I tried it and find it very useful.

As a web developer I like to have many applications open at once, but with 1GB RAM there is a limit after which you need to shut down some of them.

ifreemem seem to push that limit a bit further,

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Ahmad Zaki said on

May 27th, 2007 at 4:36 am

It would really help me in my web/graphic design process. Imagine having opened 3 browsers, some other graphic design apps, web dev apps and iTunes at the same time! Not to mention the fancy schmancy memory hogging widgets. So, I’d really be happy to have a slight increase in performance.

Mike said on

May 27th, 2007 at 5:35 am

I do tons of video editing and even my MacBook Pro gets a bit groggy after rendering/exporting large projects. This would save me a lot of restarts

alej744 said on

May 27th, 2007 at 11:57 am

My computer is pretty old, and it gets tiring to have to wait so long for the lag on some apps to finish. I spend a lot of time looking at beachballs since I only have 512MB of RAM and it’s starting to get very irritating, but I cannot afford any new RAM.

rucativava said on

May 27th, 2007 at 12:37 pm

Well, I got my first Macintosh in late 2003, an iBook G4 12″, and I never got another since! I finished my architecture studies now, and I do a lot of Photoshop and CAD, as well as 3D work. This machine is only expandable to a full 640MB RAM, which I alreday did a long time ago. I don’t want to quit on my lovely white little companion, so a RAM helper would be really in good need! I already tested it and can say IT WORKS! I wANT IT!

Justin said on

May 27th, 2007 at 3:55 pm

My 2002 G3 iBook is stuck at its 640 MB RAM ceiling, and it drives me up the wall. Even with my Dashboard widgets trimmed down to the bare minimum (weather, WiFi, battery, and mail checker) and with almost no startup items, my system thrashes about on its hard disk like crazy; it does this even if all I have open is Mail and Camino. When I need to run a Windows app for school work via VirtualPC, all bets are off… iFreeMem may not be able to let me stuff a 1 GB SO-DIMM into my iBook, but I’m sure it’ll help relieve the strain!

steve said on

May 27th, 2007 at 4:06 pm

I would use it after using photo editing programs, what I really should do is buy another gig of ram but I am going to wait on a raise for that one.

Greg said on

May 27th, 2007 at 7:10 pm

Alright. The winners have been chosen and will be notified soon.

doug said on

July 7th, 2007 at 12:01 am

I bought the product, but it cost me $12. I use it often. It is a good product.

Sprocket999 said on

July 13th, 2007 at 7:13 pm

I actually plan to buy this, as I too, am a ‘cheapskate’ with only 512 mbs in my G4 PowerBook — and running Photoshop, Illustrator, and all the rest. In the pre-OS X days I was the guy using RamDoubler 8 do all this stuff seemlessly on triple the amount of ‘vapour-memory’. I did that for YEARS with ZERO ill-affects! I love this kind of thing!

Sprocket999 said on

July 17th, 2007 at 9:18 am

Just a follow-up to my above post — I have now bought this and am happily using this (1.6.2 PPC) 2-4 times a day and am loving the results. Well worth the small price to pay. If you open and close several large RAM hog apps throughout the day, you will find this very useful indeed.

PrettyNana said on

July 21st, 2007 at 4:48 am

A usefull software

Captain Nemo said on

September 13th, 2007 at 5:00 am

I used the trial version of this product. It seemed to free up memory, but what I found was iFreeMem itself using up ~200 MB memory. So I removed it.

custom web design said on

October 9th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

Thanks for the soft!

michael said on

April 17th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

i cant believe bandersnatch said shit about firefox its the most hackable browser out there..you just need do something about it!!