Technology

Total RAM usage is a poor benchmark. Windows (and all other major OSes) cache frequently accessed files in free memory to avoid having to read them from disk every time they're accessed. The cache is freed when the memory is needed, so it doesn't impact how much memory applications can use, and thus shouldn't be included in usage benchmarks.

However, Task Manager counts cache memory towards the total usage, which tends to confuse people who think Windows is using way more memory than it actually is. I'm sure the article's conclusions about memory usage are still mostly correct, but it's good to keep in mind.