Memory Conservation

I’ve been playing the memory conservation game on the Windows CE and now Windows Mobile platform since its inception. Harkening back to the days of MS-DOS when memory constraints meant application execution life or death, the idea of multiple applications stealing away precious memory resources trained me to practice the single scenario of program launch, execution and exit. When the Pocket PC edition came along with its advocacy of removing the Close/Exit function from a CE-based application, I fought the guidelines by using the Memory Setting’s “Running Programs†tab to click the ‘Stop All’ button whenever I finished using a program lacking an exit function.

As embedded memory expanded from 16 to 32 to 64 and, now for some fortunate Windows Mobile users, 128 megabytes and beyond, my need to so frequently revisit the ‘Stop All’ function became less prevalent. However, as program space was re-allocated with installed apps and expanding data files, Stop All was my only option.

Thanks to the expansion of memory due to removable storage cards, program and some data files moved off the device’s embedded memory and onto 64, 128, 256, 512, 1GB and 2GB compact flash and now 4 GB SD cards, soon to be joined by SD variants such as mini and microSD formats. However, the challenge remained to decide which programs I needed to have on the main device so I could easily swap in and out my growing library of SD cards. Important applications like Internet communicators and media playback programs had to reside on the device, while less critical programs like games and infrequently accessed utilities were stored on removable media. And yet, even with this expanding universe of storage options, Stop All is still employed, though not as often. Let me explain why.

I am a user and big fan of SBSH’s iLauncher program shell replacement. One of the nice applets included with that program is a memory monitor that can reside in the shell tray area as a memory meter. It does a great job of showing me how I’m doing on device memory. Clicking on it brings up a detail window with a hyperlink to the memory setting control panel where I can execute the Stop All if memory consumption is out of control. I will perform this task if I’m about to run a commercial game or memory hog like a GPS mapping application. The unfortunate consequence of Stop All is that it kills programs that I would like to have running, such as a media player or task manager.

Recently, I’ve started to rely on a helpful, free program from Oxios called CloseApps. This simple yet extremely useful utility not only elegantly shuts down dead processes but also sweeps up cached memory and reclaims it back to the contiguous memory pool. So rather than killing apps via the old Stop All method that might impact unsaved work, CloseApps does a better job at protecting this data while reclaiming precious RAM.

Eventually the Windows Mobile platform will evolve from its DOS-like days of memory conservation to the Windows 95, XP and Vista days of cheap and plentiful memory chips combined with a highly sophisticated memory management system. Until then, users will continue to play an active role in conserving their Windows Mobile memory resources.