One of the many advantages it brought is this observation I recently had. While trying to monitor memory usage of an application for a client, I compared data using Hobbit (now known as Xymon) client on the host running Windows XP. And found a bit of disparity between data points. The data points I'm talking about here had no relation to the application I was monitoring. It was the memory usage of Microsoft Outlook that the client was running, aside from the application itself. The memory consumption from Microsoft Outlook jumped from 4MB to 16MB five minutes later (hobbit's data points are sent to the server every 5 minutes).
That experience and the curiosity it brought got me to dig deeper.. But no sooner after I left the client, I forgot all about it. So later when I got home, I sat in front of my notebook and launched the task manager, that brought me back to the experience earlier in the day. I ran Microsoft Outlook next (I'm using Microsoft Outlook 2007) to monitor its usage. And what better tool to use for this than the task manager. I do not need any more monitoring as the task manager offers that data in real time!
Right out, task manager presented me with information that Outlook consumes about 20MB of memory. The personal folders (.pst) file associated to it is 27.2MB in size. The memory consumption of Outlook is presented in the screenshot below.
I was intending to replicate the scenario I witnessed in my client's office but I had no idea what was being done on the monitored host. And even more puzzling, how do I replicate the sudden memory drop/increase that I saw Outlook do.
So I went on launching typical office applications, browsed the web, and opened files.. anything to replicate the observation earlier. But Outlook memory consumption remained pretty much the same.. Until at last I hit paydirt -- I minimized the Outlook window and boom.. memory drop!
I restored the window and saw the memory consumption return. Minimized and replicated the previous observations. This must be how I saw it from my client's office.
So then, if you are running low on memory and you are running Outlook it would be best to minimize it to free up more memory. Or better yet, if Outlook is "idle" or running in the background, minimize it to make more memory available to the current application in focus.
I hope that by relating this little experience of mine you can put it to good use.
