High Memory Load

Hi there,

I have noticed a considerable performance loss on my computer.
The startup times are resonable being around 2 minutes, this could be better though.
The main difference I have now found though is that the actual running of the computer is now slower, for example it takes longer to open applications.
In a software application called System Mechanic there is a tool to show how much of the ram is being used by the computer and how much is free. I have noticed that even when the computer
is not doing anything except running the normal background processes and System Mechanic is open there seems to only be around about 80mb of free memory.

This cannot be right because the computer has a 512mb ram, shown in System Mechanic as 447mb, and if you use the tune up tools in SM you can increase the volume of free memory quite considerably, eventually to around 330mb.

Please could you give me some advice onto why the memory load is so high and how I could reduce it as a norm rather than having to use SM everytime.

Thanks in advance, skyline_gtrr32