Memory hogs

Hi folks,
My MBP "uses up" the full 2GB of RAM i have in about an hour, eventually it shows about 27mb free memory left, about 1,50GB inactive, the rest is wired and active. When i check activity monitor, sort the columns by memory, i see that Safari is at the top using over 1.3 GB of virtual memory and 500+ mb real memory.
Second in the list is kernel_task with 1.22 GB of virtual memory and 100mb real memory.
All the apps i use are intel, i only have 1 powerPC app installed but it's memory use is acceptable. As soon as i restart safari (its running all day long with this forum loaded, if i need to browse other websites i use tabs) i get most of my real memory back but even as i'm typing this now Safari is starting to use huge amounts of memory again.
The thing that bothers me the most is the virtual memory (swapfiles) that get created once all the real memory is "used up" make my drive slow which makes my entire mac slow in turn, in the end i end up restarting my MBP numerous times a day to get it up to speed again.
I called Apple and a few local mac stores they could not offer me a proper explanation or solution for this.
I already re-installed safari because i really don't want to use any other browsers but the issue stays. The kernel_task process is just as bad.
If anyone has suggestions/solution for this that would be great, i understand the mac is handling the memory as it should be doing, creating the swapfiles when the real memory is running low etc but the way things are now i am pretty much unable to work properly, but i need my RAM back !
Ok, hope anyone can offer me some insight
Thanks.

Pr0digy V,
You want all of your physical memory to be used, and preferably allocated as "Inactive" RAM. This is space that has been allocated to "no-longer-running" applications, and its presence allows those applications to be launched in less than half the time. OS X will use and re-allocate the inactive RAM dynamically, so there will always be memory for new applications.
Restarting destroys this "cache" of inactive RAM, of course, so you have been shooting yourself in the foot. While it is true that Safari has been reported to "leak" memory, I think that issue was fixed long ago. I certainly never have any trouble. Even if Safari does begin to leak, it should be enough to simply restart Safari, not your computer. My "uptime" is currently at over 26 days, and I have no issues.
Now, you mention that Safari uses "huge" amounts of memory. It could be possible that something is wrong with your installation, causing Safari to use more memory than normal. We cannot really give any meaningful feedback unless and until you provide more specific figures for memory usage; "huge" doesn't do it. The same holds true for kernel_task. However, I will say that you are probably making more of this than necessary. For me, Safari uses almost 600 MBs of RAM right away, without loading anything more than this forum. Kernel_task is currently using almost 1.5 GBs (combined VM and real memory, in both cases). In spite of these figures, I have no issues.
Which leads us to use of virtual memory. Again, you are probably making more of this than necessary. You can safely ignore page ins, and page outs are only important if they exceed a certain percentage of page ins. Others have given specific ratios, but I will simpy say that page outs should be relatively small compared to page ins (my figures are 556,550/10,321).
OK, you say that yo are unable to work as things are now. Is this true? What are your symptoms? If you are truly having problems, in spite of the fact that memory is being managed properly by OS X, it is possible that you have a bad installation of OS X. This would, in all likelihood, be caused by a disk error. Disk Utility might be able to confirm this, but a clean bill of health is still no guaranty that a disk error hasn't occurred, rendering your installation "buggy."
In short, don't waste your efforts worrying about memory usage (it appears to be completely normal). If you are truly having problems, let us know exactly what they are. You might need to simply format and reinstall.
Scott

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''Duplicate post, continue here - [https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/794119]''
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== Crash ID(s) ==
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Hi,
SQL Developer is build on Java.
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All you Mac Wizards out there:
I've recently upgraded to Mountain Lion on my late 2008 13" MacBook. All seems well except something is haywire with Safari. I keep getting the program SafariSyncClient running and consuming enormous blocks of memory. The processor runs hot and the fans go at top speed while nothing happens (and the machine responsiveness slows to a crawl). I've tried deleting the Safari bookmarks.plist and letting it re-sync with iCloud, and it still happens. It consumes a large amount of processor, too. I've got 6 GB in this, and with only Firefox, PathFinder and a couple of other programs running (none very large--altogether maybe 500 MB), and SafariSyncClient is consuming 3.3 GB of RAM (yes, GB!) and there is a 2.25 GB page file! And this is after a restart. This is crazy! Never had this problem before upgrading. Force quit the application and it just happens again, over and over. Rebooting, purging the cache, whatever...still happens.
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So Frustrating!
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Thanks so much.

Okay, this is offically nuts. I just restarted and omitted my background applications. Started and closed Safari. Within 10 minutes all of the memory was gone. The Sync Client was up to 4.4 GB and counting, and the swap file up to more than 3 GB. Only Finder and some system background apps running. I watched as the memory got sucked dry like the second hand on a clock.
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Anyone else out there with this issue?
Please help!
Screen shot of Activity Monitory from the latest try:

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