
The following review appeared in the June 19, 1995 issue of Infoworld Magazine 
on page 35.


               INFOWORLD's WINDOW MANAGER - by BRIAN LIVINGSTON

           New tool gives memory statistics for individual apps...

Memory  has been on my mind in my last few columns - specifically, Windows  95 
memory requirements.

Last  week,  I wrote that the memory-management model in Windows 95  is  quite 
different  than that in Windows 3.1. Windows 95 is not limited to a swap  file 
that  is fixed in size, as is Windows 3.1. Instead, Windows  95  theoretically 
can expand its swap file until it includes all free disk space. This is called 
a  *dynamic*  swap file. There are no longer "permanent" or  "temporary"  swap 
files under Windows 95.

In  addition,  Windows 95 seems to use its swap file  more  aggressively  than 
Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1 doesn't write to its swap file until physical  memory 
(RAM) is exhausted. Windows 95 appears to write to its dynamic swap file every 
time a new program is loaded, whether or not any RAM is free.

In an example from my May 8 column, opening Win95's WordPad application on  an 
8 MB machine caused about 0.9 MB to be written to the swap file, according  to 
the  System Monitor (Sysmon.exe) applet included with beta copies  of  Windows 
95.  George Moore, a Microsoft program manager for Windows 95,  explains  that 
writing  to  the  swap file does not necessarily mean Windows  95  is  out  of 
memory. Moore says Windows 95 allocates space in its swap file in case WordPad 
needs to be swapped out of memory in the future. This policy, known as *memory 
overcommitment,*  ensures that adequate swap space will always  be  available, 
despite what other programs may have done with disk space in the interim.

Whether  or not this is a good thing, it definitely confuses  ordinary  16-bit 
Windows  utilities. Under Windows 3.1, "available memory" means  physical  RAM 
plus  the fixed swap file size, period. Under Windows 95, the  potential  swap 
file   may   grow  enormously.  Also,  several  programming   functions   that 
applications rely upon do not return the same values under Win95 betas as they 
did under Windows 3.1. (This may be getting fixed, as I reported last week).

Fortunately,  there  is  a  new shareware  program  that  attempts  to  report 
accurately  on  Windows  95's usage of system resources, RAM,  and  swap  file 
space.  Even  better,  it  can  be  used  to  determine  usage  by  individual 
applications. I've been recommending for weeks that system administrators  try 
to determine the memory requirements of their own suites of applications under 
Win95. Now, there is an ideal tool for this purpose.

It's called SuperMonitor, by Gary Tessler of TNT (Tessler's Nifty Tools).

SuperMonitor displays different resources in separate windows. To determine an 
app's  memory usage, you start a window on memory and then stop that  window's 
monitoring. (This "freezes" the figures.) Then start your app and open another 
SuperMonitor window. The difference between the two readings is the amount  of 
memory nused by the app or any combination of apps you choose.

SuperMonitor  can display continuous, average, or maximum values in  different 
windows. You can set the timing interval SuperMonitor uses, as well as logging 
the figures to a disk file.

SuperMonitor  is $44 ($49 outside U.S.) to TNT, P.O. Box 1791, San  Ramon,  CA 
94583; (510) 244-5449, CompuServe: 71044,542. It's part of a set of 35 DOS and 
Windows utilities available for $164 ($169 outside U.S.)

I've   placed   a  shareware  version  on  InfoWorld's  Internet   server   at 
http://www.infoworld.com/living.html.  The shareware version will only  update 
each  window for a maximum of three minutes, after which you must open  a  new 
window. This should be long enough for you to test the program with one app at 
a time.

Supmon.zip is also available on CompuServe at GO WINSHARE, Library 4.

