I've noticed the Ram Meter is showing much more memory than what I have. Is this right?

The RAM meter shows virtual as well as physical memory. The total showed is the combination of the two.

I will be posting this question and its answer into the FAQ, since it seems to be a common source of confusion:

To run programs, you need memory, and the more programs you run, the more memory you need.

One type of memory is called RAM (Random Access Memory) and consists of the amount of physical memory provided by the RAM chips installed in your computer. Although very fast, RAM memory is also very expensive, so you can never buy enough of it (unless you have a lot of money to spare ). To solve this problem, all modern operating systems use something called a 'swap file'. A swap file is hard drive space that?s been specially configured to look and act like RAM. By simulating physical memory, hard disk memory supplements it.

The problem of hard disk memory is that it is thousands of times slower to access than actual physical memory. On the other hand, it is much cheaper and plentiful (these days, 1 GB of RAM is installed on typical systems, while 120 GB hard disks are quite common and extremely cheap by comparison).

Instead of running out of memory when the amount of physical RAM is exhausted, modern operating systems start using the 'swap file' at that point. 'Virtual Memory' is thus the combination of physical memory PLUS hard disk memory.

Since RAM is so much faster to access than a hard disk file, operating systems always try to make sure it is used as efficiently and fully as possible, not only for currently running programs but also for things like hard disk caches, etc... This is the reason why measuring physical RAM usage is meaningless these days: any efficient OS will ALWAYS use 100% of the available RAM for *something* - part as memory for running programs, and the rest for all sort of caches, etc...

So, what really matters is the amount of 'Virtual Memory' being used. Since Virtual Memory is the combination of physical and hard disk memory, this is what the RAM Meter measures by default, and also the reason why the total amount of memory reported is always much larger than the actual amount of physical memory you have installed on your system.

You can still make the RAM Meter measure used physical memory rather than virtual memory, but, as you've probably understood by now, the returned value will be meaningless and always close to 100% of the total amount of physical RAM installed on your system.