Clear the computer's memory?

[Daniel Carrera]

Hi all,

Is there a way to clear the RAM? Say I run a lot of memory hogging 
applications like OpenOffice, GIMP and Firefox (yes, Firefox). My 
computer slows to a crawl, and I want to bring it back to a more 
pristine state without rebooting, so I close some of the worst 
offenders, but the RAM usage remains pretty high (how can my computer 
need 1GB of RAM???). I'd like to clear up as much RAM memory as is safe. 
Is there a way to do this?

Cheers,
Daniel.
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