SoftRAM 95: Does it do Anything?

Or, The Producers Revisited in "Springtime for Windows"

Last updated: December 1, 1995
by Andrew Schulman
Senior Editor, O'Reilly & Associates
andrew@ora.com



Latest news: click here if you've already read the following introductory material

"One day there appeared two rogues who spread the story that they were weavers who had mastered the art of weaving the most beautiful cloth you can imagine. Not only were the colors and patterns outstandingly lovely, but the clothes made from the cloth had the wonderful property of remaining invisible to anyone who was not fit for his job or who was particularly stupid....
"'Yes, it's a lovely piece of stuff, isn't it?' said the two rogues. And they showed the king the cloth, and explained the charming pattern that was not there.... They pretended to take the cloth off the loom, they cut out large pieces of air with their big tailor's scissors, they sewed away with needles that had no thread in them, and at last they said, 'Look, the clothes are ready!'...
"No one would let anyone else see that he couldn't see anything, for if he did, they would have thought that he was not fit for his job, or else that he was very stupid. None of the Emperor's clothes had ever had such a success before.
"'But, Daddy, he's got nothing on!' piped up a small child."
-- Hans C. Andersen (1805-1875), "The Emperor's New Clothes"

[Image: SOFTRAM.EXE shows tons of extra
memory supposedly supplied by SoftRAM, even if SoftRAM isn't
installed!]
Strange, softram.exe produces the same output whether or not SoftRAM itself (softram1.386 + softram2.386, or dynapage.vxd) is loaded.

SoftRAM 95, from Syncronys Softcorp, has been described in the trade press as the hottest-selling utility for Windows 95. For example, the November 7, 1995 PC Magazine reports that this "RAM compression" product was the top-selling piece of retail software. The marketing of SoftRAM 95 has been aggressive (one might even say innovative). The president of the company, Rainer Poertner, was named "entrepreneur of the year" by the Software Council of Southern California. Syncronys stock jumped in value from 3 cents a share in March to a high of $32 a share in August. One stock recommendation asked the almost-musical question, "Will it double your money too?" (New York Times, October 19, 1995).

Yet, several independent examinations of SoftRAM 95 have shown that this product does not in fact perform RAM compression in Windows 95. The vendor, Syncronys Softcorp, has even acknowledged this in an October 20 press release ("RAM compression is not being delivered to the operating system"). Microsoft has told Syncronys to remove the "Designed for Windows 95" logo from SoftRAM 95, and Egghead reportedly is no longer selling the product. Yet the company continues to aggressively push SoftRAM 95, and says that those who claim the product is a hoax are "insulting the intelligence" of the 650,000 people who bought the product.

It's bad enough that a product called "SoftRAM 95" does not do anything in Windows 95. But while Syncronys insists this is a bug, and that the product does work as advertised under Windows 3.1, and will soon be updated to work as advertised under Windows 95, and that Syncronys has "revolutionary new technology" which is patent pending, disassembly of the code does not turn up even an attempt, however flawed, to do RAM compression in Windows 95.

Furthermore, numerous independent tests have found no evidence that SoftRAM performs any RAM compression under Windows 3.1 either! While Syncronys has widely circulated a report done by XXCal labs, which claims that such compression is occurring, PC Magazine recently completed a test which finds the opposite: no RAM compression occurs under Windows 3.1 either.

That one can successfully market a product to 650,000 users, with a small number of returns, and receive generally favorable press coverage, is an interesting commentary on the state of the software market today.

I'll continue to update this page as the bizarre SoftRAM story unfolds. In the meantime, here are some useful links to discussions of SoftRAM 95:


NOTE: I have done some paid consulting for Connectix, whose RAM Doubler product competes directly with SoftRAM.

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