Memory Question

[Colin J. Raven]

I'm wondering seriously about this top output:

(2.6 GhZ Celeron 1GB RAM)

Mem: 52M Active, 316M Inact, 134M Wired, 111M Buf, 494M Free
Swap: 2023M Total, 2023M Free

This does add up to the 1GB of memory that my 5.3-RELEASE box has, 
that's not my question.
I always understood in FreeBSD that "Free Memory is wasted memory"

I compared this to the 5.3-RELEASE box of a colleague.

AMD Athlon (1800-something-or-other) also 1GB RAM

Mem: 467M Active, 224M Inact, 201M Wired, 33M Cache, 111M Buf, 71M Free
Swap: 4096M Total, 1672K Used, 4094M Free

Other than the fact that swap doesn't add up (or doesn't seem to) the 
box of my colleague seems to have a more "sensible" (classic) amount of 
free memory.

Is there something I can do in order to "optimize" - which in this case 
paradoxically would seem to mean "reduce" the amount of free memory?

Regards & TIA,
-Colin