January 4, 1999
by Stephen Hildreth
Editor-in-Chief

Until very recently, PowerBook users have had to put up with limited RAM capacity compared to their desktop counterparts. Solutions to this problem were limted, at best. Maxing out the memory in your laptop was often an expensive proposition, and Apple's virtual memory used valuable hard drive space and lots of battery power when you were untethered. RAM Doubler was the perfect solution. Using only software, RAM Doubler doubled the amount of available memory without using hard drive space or battery juice. Suddenly, you were able to use more applications simultaneously or install a few more control panels & extensions without worrying about how much memory your system was using.

RAM Doubler 2 upped the ante by allowing you to triple your RAM. In addition, file mapping reduced the memory requirements of Power Mac native applications. By now, over a million Mac users had made RAM Doubler the industry standard for memory management. With the introduction of RAM Doubler 8, Connectix optimized their award-winning technology for the newest Mac OS and the latest products, such as Microsoft® Office 98.

The installer program places a control panel in the control panels folder in your system folder. The control panel is divided into three new tabs - the control tab, applications detail tab, and advanced tab. The control tab has a slider which allows you to control the amount of memory you'd like to add, from file mapping only to triple the RAM:

The applications detail tab has a memory allocation monitor, similar to the About This Computer window, but with more detail. For example, the system software can be broken down into disk cache, system heap, third party drivers, etc. Clicking on an application name reveals a pie chart and details of how the application is using memory:

The advanced tab contains a set of controls that are used to configure RAM Doubler 8, additional information about how it's extending memory, and indicators of RAM Doubler's performance. Throughout the control panel, online help is available:

My PowerBook 1400c is maxed out at 64MB of RAM. Unfortunately, this isn't quite enough for today's apps, like MS Office 98, GoLive Cyberstudio, and Netscape Communicator, especially when I try to run all of them at once. RAM Doubler 8 solves this problem and allows me to use all those apps and more simultaneously. Using OS 8.5.1, I haven't noticied any system instabilities or performance hits.

Some have argued that it's more cost effective these days to just buy more RAM if you need it, since RAM prices are pretty low. That's true. However, for those who's machines are maxed out, like mine, RAM Doubler 8 is the only solution, especially if you want to maximize battery life and hard drive space. The only caveat is that RAM Doubler 8 doesn't allow you to open large apps that require more memory than the physcial memory built into your machine - it only allows you to open more apps together.

RAM Doubler 8 works magic for machines with limited RAM capability. With little or no performance hit, RAM Doubler effectively triples your RAM, allowing you to use more applications simultaneously.