DO they actually work and are they worth it?

Hi
Depends on how experienced you are. These "add-ons" alter the settings on your virtual drive setting to go with what load is on your machine
The truth is you think its helping but in reality there is very little change (It's a Placebo type thing )
When I started on the websurfing I'd download Web accelerator programs for speeding up downloading but with growing experience I have found how to get my computer to work to it's best performance without using these "Helps"
If you think that your computer is running slow, then do a bit of spring cleaning ..run a defrag?
The guys here will help you out with this,If you are not sure what to do
A big bonus to performance is of course adding more memory It's cheap and easy to fit
What OS are you running (Windows 98 XP ect)and what Processor is in your machine? Athlon,Microsoft,Ram size.
Knowing these numbers. we can make your computer run more efficiently
We have people here that were total novices when they started asking the same questions as yourself ,and quite often with mixed up computers,They were sorted out and their computers have given them little trouble bar the odd tweak needed which they can do with a minutes work as opposed to 2 or 3 days work when they asked about the same problem

The quick answers are:

"DO they actually work..." No.
and
"are they worth it?" No.

These are not needed in Windows NT, Win 2000 and WinXP. And they don't help Windows 95 or Windows 98.

If you're willing to wait a couple of days, the 2003-08-28 issue of Fred Langa's online news has a good article about this. Access it at http://www.langa.com and read the item 3 titled: Win98/ME Memory Managers, Redux

You can read about what you can do to get more speed from your Windows 95/98 machine here:

Article 1

Article 2

Article 3

Article 4

If your machine does need more RAM memory, I've had good success with Crucial.com. http://www.crucial.com

Their memory cards are excellent and they provide very good instructions on installing it (which is not difficult).

I hope something here helps!

Dwight

I have run defrag recently. I just noticed with only 3 programs opperating (and I try to keep the tray empty) Winamp, AOL (it was my brothers), and blubster. winamp would skip quite often. I know blubster eats up a lot of speed on the internet I wonder how it would interfer with programs running? There were also many files in winamp. about 1,000.

As for my computer: its an HP
Intel Pentium III
598MHz
128MB of RAM
with a 28.6 GB hard drive
of which 12.1 GB is still unused.

I have never heard of Blubster but if it works in the background all the time then it will as you have spotted start eating into the resources Slowing the computer down badly I had this happening with ICQ , Have too many of these programs running and evenually the computer crashes. On your computer it will be about 35% Normal running will be 65% to 75%(On Faster computers the range will be 25% or less to crash and 90%-100% normal running)
To find out what the number your system is currently running at do this (I am an AOL User as well)
Right-click on the AOL icon by the clock click on "System Information "
look on the right hand side of the window for the Item called "Page file Usage"
The number in here indicates the current Resource load,check this against the numbers above (Make a note of the "Page file Usage" percentage number we'll need that shortly)
While you are there, there is a small job you can do to speed up your browsing.
Click on the "Utilities" tab and clear the Browser cache by pressing the button beneath the numbers
Next job return to the desk top and locate the Blubster icon wherever its located click on it to get the menu and select "Exit" this will shut it down until next log-on or when you want to use it
Now go back to the part where I have highlighted
Question...
Has this number gone up?
If the answer is that you have gained 15% to 20% that's good More? That's brilliant

Post back with the number results thanks.

[This message was edited by bedstor on 08-28-03 at 08:59 AM.]

I use MemTurbo, and it works, at least for the purpose i use it for.

My favorite P2P program is a real resource hog anyway, and if I initiate a search which yields substantial hits (thousands) it will crash my computer. If I run MemTurbo before doing a search that I know will get a lot of hits this does not happen. Other users report the same thing using other memory optimization programs.

I haven't found a single program that gives back or frees up RAM. Real memory (actual sticks) is the only way to go in any event.

ivnj