Swap File Trivia

Here's a brain boggeler for you. (Not sure where to put this question, so I went to W2K forums since I have W2K at the house.)

I have 192MB RAM and after a fresh boot, I had 91MB physical memory free. (Using Norton System Doctor to monitor these things.) Here's the question. If I had 91MB free of RAM, why was my system using 6.3 MB of swap file?

In short, why is the OS so keen on using swap file when there is plenty of RAM open for business?

The OS is always ready to use the swap space. If you were to do some memory hungry activity, like open a 24-bit 9000x6000 TIF file, all that free memory (as much as it seems to you) would fill up in a hurry. In a case like that, the swap file has to be in place to ensure the OS doesn't run out of memory and crash!