Speed up your Mac with free app MemoryKeeper

Slow Mac got you down? You could undertake a thorough cleaning to speed up your Mac, but for a quick boost to get you through the rest of the day, there is free Mac app MemoryKeeper. It scans and cleans your memory, freeing up blocks of RAM for speedier performance.MemoryKeeper installs a rather large icon in your Mac's menu bar, which, unfortunately, you cannot hide or shrink. It shows you the amount of free memory you have available, which you can also find using the Activity Monitor. Click on the icon to open the app and then click the blue Clean Memory button to initiate a scan.

MemoryKeeper ran for less than a minute on my MacBook Pro, which has 4GB of memory, and freed up 265MB of RAM. I ran a second scan an hour later and it freed up an additional 503MB of memory. I can't say my Mac felt considerably faster after letting MemoryKeeper do its thing -- iPhoto and iTunes continued to operate in their typically lethargic ways, for example -- but my usual multitasking of switching between various browsers and a handful of productivity apps felt perhaps a bit peppier.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET)

After MemoryKeeper finishes scanning and cleaning your Mac's memory, it'll offer to set up its automatic cleanup feature. You can also access this feature in the app's preferences. You can check a box to enable automatic cleanups, and you can set the threshold of free memory available when such a scan is run. You can also choose to run either a Quick or a Full cleanup. According to the app, a Quick cleanup will not affect performance while it runs, whereas a Full cleanup may cause a dip in performance in an effort to provide a deep and complete cleaning.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET)

The logic of running an app in the background in an effort to save memory resources does not agree with me, so I'll likely utilize only MemoryKeeper's manual cleanup feature during times when my MacBook is acting sluggish.

Do you use a memory-cleaning app on your Mac to keep it running smoothly? If so, please share in the comments below.

How to create a Windows 8 USB recovery drive

A bootable Windows 8 recovery drive can help you repair or restore your PC if and when problems arise. Though you can create a recovery DVD, USB flash drives are much more convenient and are fairly inexpensive.

Here's how to create a Windows 8 USB recovery drive for your PC:

Step 1: From the Windows 8 Start screen, type "recovery," then choose Settings to see the search results under Settings. Select "Create a recovery drive" to begin the recovery drive tool.

Click to enlarge.

(Credit: Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET)

Step 2: When the recovery drive tool appears, check the box next to "Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive" if you want the recovery tools that came with your PC to be included in the recovery drive. If the selection is grayed out, that means your PC doesn't have a recovery partition. Keep in mind that if you do copy the recovery partition, you'll need at least a 16GB USB flash drive. Without it, you can make do with just 256MB. Click Next to continue.

(Credit: Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET)

Step 3: Make sure that the USB flash drive you're using is empty and that it shows up in the list of available drives. Any data left on the flash drive will be deleted by the recovery drive tool. When you get to the end of the wizard, click the Create button and wait a couple of minutes for the drive to be created.

That's it. Now you can boot the Windows 8 USB recovery drive and perform a refresh, reset, system restore, system image recovery, and an automatic repair.