I’ve been a fan of Skype for many years now – as it seems to be the most reliable and practical way to keep in touch with friends on the phone for free. I was a user of the Skype “subscriptions” for many months and was very impressed with the value for money and quality of the service.

However, it has come to my attention that the newer versions of Skype seem to be using extortionate amounts of RAM – even when the client is in idle mode.

Above is a screenshot of my Task Manager in Windows 7 32-bit on my netbook. As you can see, it’s using well over 80MB of RAM in idle mode. If you go into a call, this will trickle up to over 100MB.

I find this a little excessive – especially since the program is only trying to keep a login alive whilst in idle mode. Do something about it, Skype!