ZX  3.5 not working under 10.6  
(Version 3.5)

ERIC WOEHLER  Seems to work by dumping RAM contents to swap files. I ran this and now I have 6 swap files where before I had just the one! So the trade off is less RAM used but with more and slower swap files - can't see the benefit!!  
(Version 3.5)

WAYLAND CHIN  the "purge" command that comes free when you install the Mac OS X Developer Tools clears out the inactive memory too. and it's free.  
(Version 3.5)

ZO219  Sorry, guys, this handy little app frees up active memory (using MenuMeters as my gauge) and the result is not to slow things down, but, duh, Safari for example runs faster. I don't care if it's emptying file caches or whatever your various theories are, I am not imagining the app speed increase that results from running iFreeMem.  
(Version 3.5)

TRONDAH  This app should be renamed to "File cache cleaner", and it's feature list should read "makes your system slower by not using RAM".  
(Version 3.5)

HELMERS  The application works with a fairly basic concept: Force the system to load a large chunk of mumbo-jumbo, then release it.

I tried this in a "perfect scenario". My MacBook had spent the night copying files, and all the normally "free" memory was marked as "inactive". After pressing the optimize button I got it all back.

As some say, this is not very difficult to do, and normally OSX does a great job of managing memory. It is also not a substitute for having sufficient memory, as iFreeMem does not magically create memory, it simply forces the system to empty all its buffers.  
(Version 3.0)

EASER  I honestly wonder if this works. I ran VMfusion, which ate up pretty much all of my remaining memory. After I quit, I ran iFreeMem. Although the graph visually says I "recovered" a lot of memory, my computer still ran about as sluggish as it did right after I quite VMfusion. It most certainly did not run as fast as it would if I restarted.   
(Version 3.0)

GERWINPHILIPPO  "Defragment memory" ? That must surely be a joke?! That's just proposterous! Fragmentation is a mechanical phenomenon that cannot, by definition, occur in memory. This is definitely snake oil. You must be a fool to actually pay for this rubbish.  
(Version 3.0)

FOULGER  Sure there are plenty of Applications/Utilities that do the same thing and one can enter a unix command & also optimise RAM but ifreemem is in the menubar, memory use can be seen and clicking on optimise takes just a small amount of time. For me that saves money each time I use it. The author has offered it for sale, if you like it then pay for it, if you don't then use something else. Its just so convenient and can be used with very little waste of time.

As a codicil, I would, however exhort my oft used advice "Halve the price & triple the profit"  
(Version 2.5.1)

NARBO  sudo /usr/sbin/periodic weekly

produces the same results for FREE.  
(Version 2.5.1)

HOLYPOLY  Leopard Cache Cleaner does that (and MUCH more) for $8.99 .   
(Version 2.5.1)

XPLICIT  Thanks Dana for telling that it works as advertised, because I get slow downs on a MBP with 2GB RAM. That is without even starting the "killer" apps, like PS and such. And I don't agree to 2GB not being enough memory.  
(Version 2.5)

DANA SUTTON  Well, for better or worse it works as advertised. Use it, you get significantly more free memory. But nearly twenty bucks for a gizmo like this is i. m. h. o. unacceptably steep. I'd spring for about five, tops. If you have so little memory that you really need it, you probably would be better advised to start saving your pennies and buy more RAM.  
(Version 2.5)

MAC-KIWI  If you clean the cache-folders by an apple-script, you have the same effect. Applescript is for free and integrated in OSX.  
(Version 2.0)

PHYSICSGUY  You shouldn't have much free memory. What you want to make sure of is that your free + inactive memory isn't low.

The reason people see slowdowns when they run this program is that you're effectively deleting a bunch of cached data (like Safari tabs you aren't currently viewing) from memory, so you have to reload it from disk.

Here's an Apple document that goes over the types of memory you see in Activity Monitor and what they mean: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918  
(Version 2.0)

FOULGER  I've been using the trial for two days and it appears to be making things more zippy. I'll use it till the trial expires and if I conclude that it speeds things up overall I will buy it.  
(Version 2.0)

JOE12SOUTH  This app is nothing like SpeedDoubler. It reorganizes memory to eliminate fragments, and it does so simply and effectively. If you're a power user that uses memory hungry applications (you know who you are) than this app is a nice tool to have to avoid rebooting.   
(Version 2.0)

SYROS  it doesnt worth 10 pounds,

it would better if it was a freeware,   
(Version 2.0)

MAC-KIWI  LOL!

Remember "Speeddoubler", "RAM-Doubler" ...

Apps for the trash ...  
(Version 2.0)

CHRIS HABIG  This program is a total, ineffective waste of time. Free memory is by definition memory that isn't being used. There is no way that unused memory can make the system or any particular application faster.  
(Version 2.0)

IGREG  Wow. My initial reaction on trying it once is that this is very useful. There was a similar program available in the classic OS days, but can not remember its name.

This is faster and more practical than rebooting. Besides, excessive rebooting just puts that extra wear and tear on the hardware.

I will continue to use it during its 2 week trial period, and if it continues to work well, I am buying it.  
(Version 2.0)

IBOOKG4USER  Hi tried this little app. because I read about it somewhere in web... . My G4 iBook (Tiger 10.4.11) has the maximum amount of memory it can have (1.25 Gb), but since I usually keep nearly a dozen of running application, I often felt slowing down and the coloured spinning ball come out very often! The only solution to that was, of course, to reboot!!

In this moment I've got 11 applications open, some of them rather heavy, and Firefox with 10 tabs! And all is going speedy, thanks to this little utiliy!

A good value for who cannot have 2 or more GB of ram!!  
(Version 1.7.2)

RAY16  It seems that 1.7.0 is the last stable for version 10.3.9 1.7.2 still doesn't work for Panther.  
(Version 1.7.2)

RAY16  Does 1.7.2 work with Panther???

Developer this has been slow to answer!  
(Version 1.7.2)

RAY16  1.7.2 has the same problem as I poeted below.....  
(Version 1.7.2)

RAY16  There was a bug in the 10.3.9 Version. Within a day I set the bug report to the Developer, and it was fixed right away. So to Mac OS ( the post below ) get a life, and do your software homework.

If the link above doesn't work, this one will.....

http://activata.co.uk/downloads_files/iFreeMem-1-7-0.dmg.zip  
(Version 1.7)

MAC OS X 4EVER  Warning; Scam Artist!

I paid for the program and was not sent a valid activation code.

The author has completely ignored dozens of emails and the retailer, Esellerate has refused to refund.

I had to to file a fraud report at the bank to reverse the charge.

The author is not in the U.S. so it is doubtful that they will get in any trouble.

Avoid what I have been put through.

Do not use Esellerate, they charge your card but don't back up your purchase in any way. They will not process a refund and just tell you to contact the author.

In this case, where the author is an obvious thief, I am hung out to dry.

They probably figure most people will go away for such a small amount of money.

They probably end up with most of what they steal.

I buy a lot of Mac software and support a lot of shareware and the Mac community, but I will never use Esellerate again!

It is sad when scam artists take advantage of those of us who actually pay for software.

I have tried multiple times to activate it with the codes they sent, and it simply will not work. I copied and pasted the information, there is 0% chance of error on my part.

The author completely ignores all email attempts.

I have nowhere else to turn other than reversing the charge at the bank.

FYI, this software isn't even on VersionTracker, and MacUpdate may want to remove it.  
(Version 1.7)

SJK  I'm not sure exactly what iFreeMem does but have noticed that certain Spotlight searches (a single character seems particularly effective) will trigger the mds background process to run for a bit and usually reallocate as much of Inactive memory as possible to Free. And running a SuperDuper! backup has a similar Inactive-to-Free memory reallocation side effect.

What I *really* want is some way to clean up after misbehaving apps that consume large amounts of virtual memory swap space that's never reclaimed after they've quit. A blatant example of this symptom is easily reproduced when Toast multiplexes EyeTV recordings while a few other commonly used apps are running. The number of swapfiles can increase from 2 to 6 on my 2GB iMac G5 as swap space usage jumps from a couple hundred MB to over 1.5GB and system performance significantly deteriorates. After Toast quits (when it doesn't fail with malloc errors first) swap space usage remains high and the system is still sluggishly crippled, requiring a logout or restart to get back to normal.

A similar "vm blowout" scenario can occur infrequently with certain other app usage combinations, but it's unavoidable during Toast's EyeTV multiplexing unless it's being run basically standalone (which is highly impractical). And Roxio remains uninterested in finding/fixing the problem, at most blaming OS X memory management.

If there were an acceptable workaround for that kind of memory usage snafu to save time and hassle of unwanted logouts and restarts (which really shouldn't be necessary) I'd seriously consider paying for it. Certain Unix-based systems are better than OS X at being temporarily brought to their knees by rogue memory usage, yet still be able to recover and run normally again after any offending processes are killed or stop running.  
(Version 1.6.5)

SPROCKET999  I'm using a G4 PowerBook (1.5ghz PPC) with a measely 512 mbs of RAM. After a failed attempt with 1.6.4, I found a copy of 1.6.2. Wow! THAT version did the trick for me and I did find this retrieved 'stuck' memory very very well. I have now bought this and am happily using this 2-4 times a day. Previously, I would run Disk Utility and repair permissions. That gave back 'some' of the stuck memory but it was also slow. I only gave this a 4 out 5 because I find the app icon in the dock redundant, since the actual work is done by a graph in the Menu Bar. My rating is by no means a reflection on how well this works, though. I highly recommended iFreeMem to anyone who opens and closes several apps throughout the day. (My PowerBook seems peppier too!)  
(Version 1.6.4)

THREEDEE912  Appears to do the same kind of memory management as the weekly maintenance script, by 'removing' inactive memory. You could do this easily for free.  
(Version 1.6)

ZO219  Superb. I had no idea performance could be increased like this. Keep it in your dock and everytime things slow down, run it. You'll see! Big, measurable "RAM" boost.  
(Version 1.5.1)

ANKST  Do it yourself for free... Open Terminal, then type "sudo periodic weekly".   
(Version 1.5)

LUHMANN  I've been using this for a while now and I do think it helps. The real question is why? I think it helps out most where there are some programs that have problems in how they handle memory, like Firefox. If this is the case, the big question is whether it doesn't just make more sense to identify those programs and quit and relaunch those programs rather than using iFreeMem. Quitting and relaunching a troublesome app seems like a better solution as it doesn't create a lag in the running of currently running apps as iFreeMem does.  
(Version 1.4)

NONTROPPO  Memory managers are a dubious area of software. Users appear critically sensitive to the amount of free RAM, and assume the larger this number the faster things will be. Operating systems designers and many systems engineers believe the opposite.

For informed opinions, please see:

http://www.bitsum.com/winmemboost.asp

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/41095/41095.html

Both articles are highly critical of memory 'optimization'.

I have tried using iFreeMem for a several days. Now, in the limited scenario that I am starting an application for the first time, that i have lots of other apps open BUT don't care about their performance, iFreeMem creates a bit of headroom. But the whole system becomes more sluggish. The benefit of slightly reduced loadtime of data is offset by the severe performance hit as *every* other application has to page its data back in. Most usage scenarios I tried simply caused my machine to beachball for seconds after "optimizing" my memory.

In general if you are using more than one app, you will significantly damage your performance until everything is paged back into memory which gets you back where you started. If you don't mind grinding your disk only to get one app to have more headroom, then go ahead. In terms of design, it appears well programmed and the memory monitor is nice.  
(Version 1.3)

TREASONS  This may work for some, but here's my experience on an Intel iMac with 2G RAM:

1. With multiple programs running, including Safari with multiple tabs open, my system had about 25MB free RAM.

2. I ran iFreeMem, and suddenly had about 600MB free RAM. Quite a feat, I thought. Usually I have to quit Safari and other programs, then restart them to reclaim the huge amounts of memory they consume after a day or two of heavy use.

3. When I went to actually use Safari, switching from one tab to the next took 10-20 seconds (with the spinning beachball). Copying to iClip took longer than usual, and some items weren't copied at all. In short, the first time I used each application after running iFreeMem, it was incredibly slow.

4. After an hour or so or operation, my free memory is back down to 75MB, a little better than where I began, but nothing to write home about.

To summarize, iFreeMem appears to free up all the memory that applications use to speed up their operation. I can regain memory much more quickly by quitting and restarting my memory hog programs. There seems to be little if any benefit to running this program.  
(Version 1.1)

LARSEN2K4  I've been testing iFreeMem for a week now - every time my Mac mini G4 becomes a bit slower because of using tons of apps (especially while using Final Cut Express) - just one click in this neat little app and the system runs like just being started. I'll buy it now and I can absolutely recommend it.  
(Version 1.1)

MACCOOPER  This is a great time saver! I use to have to reboot to get back memory. I can recommend this program to everyone! Where has this been my whole OSX life?!

Congrats to the developer for providing this great app!.  
(Version 1.1)