randall r schulz rgpoguasonicnet sunday 10 february 2008 0927 tom patton wrote missed point nothing since hardware refreshes anywaythen constitutes energy wasteso costs nothing extra linux hang onto possibly useful information additional expense advantage goes linux windows wastes energy refreshing empty ram yes misunderstood still think tiny energy issue null would interesting know compares energy used extra disk activity needed refill ram later windows inferior algorithms require main energy consumption hard drive spindle motor highperformance disks fast seek times presumably consume nonnegligible energy voicecoil disk arm actuators rather tongueincheek anyway considering odds ram cache stale hypotheses could easily disproved longterm test comparison still think quantities noise would probably difficult get meaningful measurement would many confounding factors ambient temperature fluctuation causing fan speed changes eg different cpu io balance tom nm randall schulz tue 05 aug 2008 170318 0800 opensuse memory leakage normal huge amount usage ram memory 2gb free 121 mb