Thanks for your comment.

It sounds like there are two issues to address here — one is the use of your laptop’s RAM or Random Access Memory, and the other is your hard drive.

When you get system messages telling you your ‘memory’ is full, it’s most probably referring to your RAM. RAM is used by the computer’s operating system — it loads itself into RAM when the computer boots up, and then when you open applications, they are also loaded into RAM (the memory that is on chips) so that they can respond to your commands very quickly. As applications are unloaded (closed), they should release the RAM they were allocated — but often, they don’t. They sometimes stay in RAM in case you need them again. As time goes by and more and more bits of programs stay in RAM, the amount of available RAM runs low and warning messages start appearing. A re-boot often solves the problem, at least temporarily.

Your hard drive is your computer’s permanent storage area. Everything is stored there — including any TV shows or films you download using 4OD – until you delete them. My recommendation is to always delete TV shows and films after watching them. This will free up the space they were taking up on the hard drive. (They’re not permanently stored in RAM, though I daresay chunks of them are transferred (‘buffered’) into RAM while you’re watching them, to facilitate the smooth running of the images. It depends on how good your video card is — these days, they too have their own on-board memory chips that handle the processing of images, to take some of the load off the central processor chip.)

Operating systems like Windows XP use a lot of RAM just to run the computer, so if your laptop has a relatively small amount of RAM, it might begin to be filled up quite quickly once you start running applications as well. My machines have 2GB of RAM each, and they seem to cope OK.

Downloaded TV shows and films can also take up quite a lot of storage space on your hard drive too, especially if you don’t delete them. Another thing that can eat into hard drive space is the creation of temporary files. Applications often create files with the .tmp extension for various operations, and they don’t always delete them after they’ve finished with them. You might benefit from running a disk cleanup application such as Windows XP’s built-in application (Start/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Cleanup), which should identify any unwanted clutter on your hard drive and safely remove it.

Hope this helps!

Amy

As the Kservice module has been around on the internet for a while, and has been used in the past by many (for want of a better word) illegal P2P networks, I wonder if this has made it more easily hijackable by malware — do you scan your machines regularly with a decent anti-virus/trojan/etc checker? Maybe there’s something on there using Kservice.exe to send out thousands of illicit e-mails or something, and is receiving back info on whether the addresses are “live” and then uploading that info back to the trojan’s owner?

I don’t know if Kservice can actually be used in that way, but we’re told hackers are very sophisticated these days, so it wouldn’t surprise me!

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear how things pan out for you.

I use P2P quite a bit, but hadn’t done this month — and then my 70GB allowance was breached (I had a mail). I was a bit shocked as it’s only about 1/2 way through the month. And then every day I got another message saying I had used another GB and would be charged. I then ensured I had disabled P2P and torrent applications, but the PC, sometimes two (2nd which had also had 4od on), had been left on 24/7.

I’m not in the house in the day, so I know I don’t use much when P2P isn’t open — but it’s clocking up to a GB a day. Will see how it pans out now. I have set a scheduler for my P2P usage, meaning I only use it in free time (12-8AM) and disabled Kservice, so hopefully I should see a huge drop — if not, I dont know what’s up.

Has really annoyed me, as I am paying through the teeth for that bandwidth and maybe now I know why. I may have even been increasing my usage allowance just to supplement 4OD’s P2P network, in which case I should charge them — but yes, I know I agreed to this. Should learn from this: like the free things aren’t always best for you!

Yes, it is a conundrum.

Now I’ve had time to consider the situation, I’ve decided I actually don’t mind a little bit of legitimate peer-to-peer networking going on via my machines. Right now I’m pumping out a steady 1.2-1.6 kilobytes of data per second — it’s ER‘s latest (300th) episode, which I missed on TV because my Sky box failed to record the last available showing of it. I “rented” it from 4OD for 99p this afternoon — the first time I’ve paid to watch a TV download — and it was worth every penny to watch it when I wanted to.

I’m feeling OK about the P2P sharing that started again after I downloaded it because I know I’m helping another ER fan get what they want more efficiently, just as I had earlier.

But I’ve got 30GB of bandwidth to play with each month. The additional load will make little difference. For those with only 2GB a month, who are already likely to be using more of their available bandwidth with their own downloads of TV on demand, it might make all the difference.

Will my ISP, Pipex, interpret it as unfair usage? I hope not. The laptop’s not running 24/7, just in the evenings, mostly. But it’ll make for an interesting court case if they ever do dump me because of it!

PS: An afterthought — be funny, wouldn’t it, if iTunes started selling its songs using this model …