In 1995, a company by the name of Syncronys Softcorp released a product that
had some pretty amazing claims;
It was a piece of software called SoftRAM, a so-called “RAM-doubling software for
Windows.”
It claimed to double your computer’s memory, without having to go through the
hassle and expense of getting actual RAM and performing a hardware upgrade.
With SoftRAM, 4 megabytes becomes 8 megabytes, and 8 megabytes becomes
16 megabytes.
There’s no need for hard RAM because SoftRAM works with all 386 and higher
desktop and laptop computers,
and with its one-click, one-time installation,
it was ideal for those computer users who wanted to start using more resource-
intensive programs right away.
Sounds incredible, right?
Well, the only thing was...
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This is a brand new copy of SoftRAM that I purchased just for your entertainment.
Today, we’re gonna open up this software for the first time since it left the factory 25
years ago.
The version I have here is the first release of SoftRAM designed for Windows 3.1.
It was released in May of 1995, three months before Windows 95 launched.
The contents of the box are contained inside of a cardboard insert.
Opening this up reveals a pamphlet that has everything we need to get started.
There is an instruction manual, a registration card,
and yeah, apparently, Syncronys sold merch like a T-shirt and hat that you could
actually get by sending this card in.
And finally, one single floppy disk that contains the entire program.
Alright, so that’s what you would get in the box when you purchased SoftRAM, but
what did it actually install on your computer?
When you insert the floppy disk and run the setup executable, the first thing that you’ll
see is a splash screen saying,
“Congratulations on purchasing SoftRAM.”
The setup wizard itself is extremely basic;
It will ask you for your name and company, and let you choose where you want to
install the program.
Since the entire program is contained on a single floppy disk, the program only
requires 950 kilobytes of hard drive space.
This also means that the program installs rather quickly.
Once it finishes copying files, a message box will appear informing us that we have
15,360 kilobytes of “Extended RAM.”
And that’s it.
The wizard then prompts you to restart your PC for the changes to take effect,
so we’ll do that.
Upon logging back into Windows, you’ll see that SoftRAM has enshrined itself in a
splash screen that will display every time you log into Windows.
Now the SoftRAM program itself is pretty basic.
All of the quote-unquote “functionality” of the program is contained on this one
single screen.
Here we have two gauges.
One showing the amount of soft RAM that the system has available to it
and the other showing the amount of free RAM the system has.
The center contains stats about how much physical RAM, soft RAM, virtual
memory, and total memory that the system has available to it.
When SoftRAM is running, the gauge on the left will automatically max out.
Now you’ll notice that the soft RAM and physical RAM meters in the center are
about the same.
This machine has 16 megabytes of RAM.
SoftRAM is saying that it’s giving the system an additional 16 megabytes of soft
RAM, meaning that the system should have 32 megabytes of RAM available to it.
All of the program’s controls are contained at the bottom of the
application.
The arrows on the left allow you to increase or decrease the amount of soft
RAM available to the system.
Next to that, we have a button that enables or disables the program.
The most basic options menu I’ve ever seen which gives you literally one option to
have the application stay on top of other windows or not.
And finally, the help documentation.
SoftRAM also includes a readme document in the program group but it contains the
exact same info as the help documentation.
It goes into more detail about how the program works.
Or at least, allegedly, works.
There’s actually a decent amount of information contained in here.
It talks about virtual memory and how demand paging works, for example.
SoftRAM claims to dynamically compress the contents in physical RAM
by using its RAM analyst tool to calculate the most efficient compression method.
It also claims to defragment memory in real time to create more contiguous
memory.
It basically makes it sound like it’s a super-advanced and sophisticated piece
of software.
The problem is though, the program doesn’t do any of these things.
So that begs the question:
What does SoftRAM actually do?
Well, the short answer is...
not much.
In late 1995, numerous publications released articles where they investigated
SoftRAM’s claims.
One German publication did a very thorough analysis of SoftRAM.
Despite the fact that the program claimed to double your computer’s RAM by using
“patent-pending compression technology,”
it in fact did not even attempt to perform any compression at all.
SoftRAM’s interface essentially falsified the statistics shown on the gauges.
You weren’t going to get double memory or any memory compression no matter how
you configured the application.
The only thing the program really did was increase the size of your page file.
The page file, commonly also known as the swap file, essentially acts as a form of
virtual memory that is stored on the hard disk.
It allows the operating system to store certain data when the machine’s physical
RAM capacity has been exhausted.
But the thing is, you could easily do this yourself for free without having to spend...
Yeah, you heard me right.
This piece of junk sold for $80, at least the version created for Windows 95 did.
The Windows 3.1 version sold for a much lower price of $29.95.
SoftRAM 95 was released right when Windows 95 launched in August of 1995.
The installer is pretty much the same along with the program.
Aside from the 95 branding, the two editions of the program look identical.
And just like the original version of SoftRAM, 95 makes absolutely no
attempt to compress any memory or double your RAM.
I’m not exactly sure what made Syncronys think that charging an additional $50 for
this version of the program was justifiable.
When these reports started to surface, it was initially believed that only the version
of SoftRAM for Windows 95 did not work as intended,
something that Syncronys actually publicly acknowledged.
But upon further investigation, people discovered that the older version of
SoftRAM for Windows 3.1 also does not make any attempts to compress memory.
Despite all of this, Syncronys was able to sell over 700,000 copies of both versions
of SoftRAM between May and December of 1995.
These people purchased SoftRAM because it was advertised as a cheaper
but just as effective alternative to purchasing actual RAM and performing a
memory upgrade on your system.
I mean, the FAQ document even has the balls to claim that SoftRAM functions
exactly like physical RAM,
and that it “effectively doubles the amount of memory available to Windows
applications.”
As you can imagine, it didn’t take long for the U.S. Government to get involved.
The Federal Trade Commission started an investigation into Syncronys towards the
end of 1995.
The published report analyzed SoftRAM’s claims one by one and found that,
“SoftRAM 95 does not ...”
The report also found that “Microsoft Inc.,”
which yeah, by the way, guys, that was not Microsoft’s actual company name,
“has not licensed, endorsed, or otherwise approved SoftRAM 95 for use with
Windows 95.”
Now this is noteworthy, because on SoftRAM 95’s packaging, Syncronys had
put the “Designed for Windows 95” logo,
something that can only be put on products that went through Microsoft’s
logo testing program.
Now in that article that I mentioned previously, Syncronys claims that they did
get approval to use the logo...
but in September of 1995.
A Microsoft employee quoted in the same article provides some further clarification,
saying that while Syncronys did submit a version of SoftRAM for logo testing,
the version they actually shipped was an older version containing bugs that was
not submitted for testing.
I will leave the full article down below in this video’s description.
It’s definitely worth a read if you want to hear more about the testing methodology
performed on the program and how the publication came to the conclusion that
SoftRAM didn’t do anything it claimed to do.
When reports of SoftRAM’s lack of functionality came out, some began to
refer to the product as “placebo software,”
a program that relies on the placebo effect,
hoping that the user by simply seeing a gauge saying “Your memory’s being
doubled” will simply believe it,
and attribute any faster performance they think they experience
to SoftRAM doing just what it said it would do.
I mean, it had the “Designed for Windows 95” logo on the box, so it must have been
approved by Microsoft.
Right?
In 1996, Syncronys, faced not only with an FTC investigation, but also individual
lawsuits from customers, decided to settle all of these disputes.
While I wasn’t able to find the exact amount of money the company was fined
or had to pay in these lawsuits, they did come to an agreement with the FTC to
pay a rebate to any SoftRAM user that requested it.
So it all worked out in the end, right?
Well, no, not really.
The crazy thing is this rebate was only $10.00.
Yeah, so, unfortunately, nobody got 100% of their money back,
except possibly for those customers who filed a lawsuit against Syncronys directly.
But it’s likely that Syncronys wasn’t even able to pay back the $10.00 rebates.
The company filed for bankruptcy in 1998,
with over $4.5 million in debt and only $200,000 worth of assets.
In an interview with CNET, Hayley Ramer, the company’s bankruptcy counsel, stated,
Syncronys tried to bounce back from the scandal releasing a few other Windows
utilities in the late ‘90s.
But the damage had already been done.
Despite the fact that the company’s CEO tried to claim that the company’s problems
were history,
people didn’t forget the SoftRAM incident.
And for a company that released a product that ended up not doing anything
it claimed to do...
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That’s all for today’s episode.
I hope you all enjoyed the bizarre but interesting story of SoftRAM.
If you did, be sure to give this video a like and get subscribed.
And if any of you guys out there purchased SoftRAM back in the ‘90s,
be sure to let us know if you actually got your rebate.
I want to thank all of you so much for watching, and as always, I will see you all
in the next video.
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