Can anyone tell me how to keep my memory level down. I went to media, the to explore its shows how much memory you have. Media card properties shows I have 27.8% used, 538.7MB file usage, 1.8GB Total size. Device memory properties 0.04% used, 400.0KB file usage, 859.2MB total size. System properties has 87.0% used, 86.8MB file usage, 99.7MB total. Can anyone please tell me in beginner terms what all this means? HELP!!!

1) You have a 2 gig card in your phone and you've used 27 percent of it. Think of this as a second hard drive on your computer used strictly for storage

2 device memory is a bit more tricky its how much memory your phone has for the Operating system and programs you've installed

3) system Preferences 87% used means you have ALOT of progams running. On the BB you have to be careful switching between programs because when you switch they don't actually close. To close you need to click menu (black berry button) then close. If you are on the home screen click menu then switch applications and it will show you everything that's open.

Ok. What is your worry exactly? That you'll run out of space for photos? That you're BB will slow down because it is using too much memory? The former is affected by the memory card usage: things you store there like songs and ringtones and photos. I really don't know if using up the application space slows the BB down.

I suggest that if you're just looking for a maintenance approach you should do what one does to keep space in any situation: don't install or save things you don't need, and delete things once they have outlived their usefulness. And be sure to close running programs once you have finished with them. Otherwise they continue to use memory.

Somehow I don't think I'm getting to the root of your panic: but i'm not sure where it is coming from. Do the numbers themsleves frighten you? If so: trust the percentages.

As a note, there is an easier way to see how much memory is used and free go to options->memory, then scroll down it will tell you free space for app memory, total and free for device memory and total and free for media card memory

Yes it does. The more free space in app memory, the more the blackberry can use and therefore perform quicker. the app memory is basically the RAM. just like a pc

Well that, of course makes perfect sense.

What I wondered was more: is it noticeable. Clearly if there are a lot running it would be. I just wondered if many installations made it noticeably slower.

installations are on the device memory, (like the hard drive in the pc) and the app memory is merely making the installations run (like the RAM in a pc).

having 20 apps actually installed and not running wont make a difference at all to the performance, but having them all running at the same time would.

So unlike a pc, it doesn't depend on virtual memory, which comes from the hard drive.

as far as i know, no. though if the device is extremely low on app memory, it will just reboot itself or force you to reboot it, by freezing.

OK, if I look under options, I have 6.1MB of app memory, this I would guess is bad. BB desktop app loader reports 56MB of something available. Also under options the available device memory is something like 854 out of 859 MB. The phone has one app loaded, HanDbase, and so far as I know all the media is on the the sd card. It gets so clogged the voice dialer reports no go due to low mem. Ocassionally the thing reboots itself and gets better. Handbase can only store data on the device. On a PC the amount of Handbase data I have stored would take up maybe 3MB.

EDIT: will deleting BB messenger help much? I'm rather antisocial and won't miss it.

yup, delete anything you dont use. help, memopad, games, bbm, bb maps etc.
also clear out browser cache
and delete sent messages, as well as messages you dont need.

Hmm... I'll check this out later.