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.