The ram monitor shows I've used about half of my available ram with a project open, but when I move the mouse pointer to hover over it, it shows that I've used 3.8 gigs of the measly 4 gigs of ram I currently have.  Why?  How to fix?
 
[PS once I pay off my upgrade to X3 and my new OS on my Discover card, I'm getting more ram.... ]

How much Virtual Memory do you have configured?  Odds on the memory meter takes that into account too.

Didn't think of that.  duh.  The virtual memory is currently at 4 gigs, so 4+4=8 and 3.8/8 = 48%