Top loses memory over time? Memory leak?

[Lowell Gilbert]

Tim <Niy at extacy.homeip.net> writes:

> This machine sat unattended all day. What could be causing the drastic
> drop in Free memory? Is this normal? When I actually use the machine,
> it's even worse... Almost all of my RAM goes from Free to other
> various states, Mostly Inactive, even after I've closed all the
> programs I've had open, rather quickly (maybe an hour or two)

See the FAQ, but basically the answer is 
"Free memory is wasted memory."