Memory Booster Review

It's easy to recommend packages, but these recommendations carry no weight unless they are backed by investigation and experience. We've purchased, installed and used RAMrocket ourselves on laptops and desktops.

Purchasing as you would expect these days is easy and download is instantly available. Much sure you take note of serial number etc when presented on screen - you'll need one to activate the software and the other in case there are any future problems.

Our timed installation of the software on the laptop took only 45 seconds from start to finish. Hard disk space required is only 4.3Mb. At this point you have a fully working package that if you wanted to, you could leave and not worry about any further. However, it's worth taking a few minutes just to tweak one or two things on the Options tab.

1. Laptop Installed with 128Mb RAM

Our first installation was on a laptop fitted with 128Mb RAM. At this point RAMrocket showed us we had just 40Mb (31%) of free RAM after loading Windows. (Note that we have a firewall, anti-virus software and other applications running in the system tray so your results may vary from ours). Not exactly swimming in free RAM, it's no wonder we sometimes had problems running applications that were memory-intensive!

Releasing RAM Test

Our tests then required loading Internet Explorer, Word, Outlook and DreamWeaver at the same time. As each loaded, RAMrocket showed us reducing memory until we only had 12Mb RAM left. During this test we set RAMrocket up so that it didn't take any action as normally it would have tried to free up more memory for us!

Clearly, running a few applications at the same time runs down the memory pretty fast, something that many people don't realise. (In fact even running one application at a time doesn't help. It's well established that Windows doesn't release RAM properly after shutting the application down, so each time you start a new application, or even the same one again, you'll lose a bit more RAM each time until you run out)!

RAMrocket is specifically designed to counter these problems simply and swiftly. In the above example where we had 12Mb left, when we shut all the applications down, RAMrocket made sure it clawed back all the RAM previously used and we got our 40Mb RAM back. Test passed.

Keeping RAM Test

As I say, we set RAMrocket up specifically so that it didn't actively seek more RAM in the above test as it would have done normally. In the next test we let it do what it is designed to do, keeping hold of RAM where it can.

Our default setting after installation was that RAMrocket would actively seek to release memory if free RAM dropped below 36Mb. We repeated the above test, loading all the applications at the same time but with RAMrocket's automatic RAM release function switched on and set at 36Mb. This time, instead of gradually dropping as each application loaded to leave only 12Mb, we retained exactly 36Mb throughout the entire test. Again, test passed with full marks.

Interestingly, when we shut all the applications down, RAMrocket freed up even more memory than we started with.

Grabbing More RAM test

In our final test we checked out RAMrocket's capability of releasing more RAM when you ask for it. There's 2 ways of doing this. The first is to click the 'Release RAM' button in the Main window (shown below)

In our example this will try to release more RAM to make a total of 60Mb. This works fine when you don't have any applications loaded and we easily achieved our objective. When you have applications loaded however, you should note that you won't always achieve this. It stands to reason that you can't infinitely claw back RAM from applications, but you will get some released.

That said however, clicking on the 'Free All RAM' button will give you as much as it can find. In our example it freed up a total of 82 Mb! That's an astonishing amount to find as I know from experience that Windows can suck up so much memory.

General Running Test

Behind these activities there's another scheduled one that looks to recovery RAM every 60 minutes by default, although you can set it to what period you like, whilst you are working. I guess more and more RAM gets used even when you are working within one package. Looking at the history of released RAM which RAMrocket can show you, I noticed over a 4 hour period when I was only working in one package, RAMrocket released 9Mb, 7Mb, 7Mb and 14Mb after 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours use respectively. Interesting! So RAMrocket is actively looking after you whilst you are working and oblivious to what's going on behind the scenes.

2. Desktop Installed with 512Mb RAM

Our second test involved one of our desktops fitted with 512Mb of RAM. It seems a bit superfluous using it on such a machine but I was keen to try it out in all situations.

Installation was exactly the same and just as easy and quick. Out of our 512Mb, Windows left us with 328Mb (64%) according to RAMrocket. Boy, is Windows XP Pro ever-hungry! Maybe I'll really need RAMrocket here!

Releasing RAM Test

Since I'm working on a more powerful machine, I've decided to load up 9 applications at the same time on this test - DreamWeaver, Internet Explorer (twice), Outlook, Windows Media Player, Excel, Word, QuickBooks, PhotoShop, FireWorks and FrontPage. Our 328Mb is soon whittled down to 154Mb of memory. Shutting them all down RAMrocket once again made sure we got all our original RAM back, no problems there.

Keeping RAM Test

Again, as with the laptop test, once we reached the threshold set, RAMrocket actively kept our required level of RAM.

Grabbing More RAM test

On this occasion we chose to 'Release RAM' whilst the 9 applications were still loaded. The results were that our 154Mb of RAM became 172Mb which was quite respectable given the load the RAm was under.

Selecting 'Free All RAM' however was quite different. We got a stunning 200Mb released giving a total of 372Mb free with all 9 applications still loaded! That's more RAM than what we actually started with, without anything loaded! I don't recommend doing this however, as I thinks there was more reliance on virtual RAM which was slightly slowing up applications. It's not likely to happen in most cases since I can't see the need to run 9 high-overhead applications all at once! The amount of RAM freed up was nevertheless very impressive.

After shutting all programs down, RAMrocket gave me even more RAM giving me 394Mb free.

Games Test

As a final test on the desktop, we loaded up just-released games to see what sort of overhead they demanded in terms of RAM. Of those we ran, a whopping 50Mb to 70Mb was consumed whilst running. This clearly shows high demands made by games and the need for as much free RAM as possible.

3. Conclusion

There's nothing complicated about this package, and it does its job very well. If you have any kind of desktop or laptop, especially older models, you'll find RAMrocket extremely useful. Even those with meatier RAM fitted will find this utility helpful to keep your machine running smoothly and in peak condition at all times.

It's claimed this type of software will reduce crashes. It's not something we can comment on other than we certainly haven't experienced a crash (and we've been using RAMrocket for some time). If the software is keeping RAM clean, releasing it and defragmenting it when it can, then it certainly should reduce the risk of crashes due to RAM filling up and RAM clashes.

For games users, I'd say this is an essential package, even those gamers with 512Mb or more fitted, I'd still recommend this package. There's nothing worse than crashing out of an unsaved game or having a game run slowly.

For all other users, this is an essential package too. The cost is minimal to keep your packages running smoothly and as fast as possible as well as allowing you to run more than one application at the same time without difficulty.

Apart from anti-virus software and firewalls, it's the one utility we've run in the offices here for several years because of the benefits gained.

The software is designed to work on any system running windows 95, 98, ME and Windows 2000 or XP. You can purchase the software wherever you live in the world and it will be on your computer in minutes. Since you'll be paying by card, payment will be in your local currency although you'll see the software priced in U.S. Dollars. The cost is only $29.95 (click here for currency conversion if you need it) and is well worth the small investment.

Click here to increase available RAM and speed up software today

P.S. - There are other packages that this company produces that we recommend. Effectively they speed up every other aspect of your computing experience from disk drive to downloading. Check out the right-hand column on this page.

Lee

The following packages, also from Ascentive have the added advantage of giving you the option of separately choosing to speed up your:

• Modem/Internet
• Windows/Software

So you can buy each of the above separately depending on your needs. Click on any of the below for more info.

Speed up all modems and downloads

Speed up Windows and software

Both the above in a discounted bundle