Here is the memory usage of Eclipse when it is minimized BEFORE
installing the plugin. Notice that even though I have 1GB in my
machine and the VM size is over 100MB, the physical mem usage is
only 4MB. The rest is swapped out, leading to many page faults
and sluggishness when I go back to Eclipse.
Here is the preference page for the KeepResident plugin. You
can adjust the minimum and maximum working set size, and enable
the use of VirtualLock() to force Windows to keep more of Eclipse
in memory.
Here is the memory usage of Eclipse when it is minimized AFTER
installing the plugin. Notice that the physical mem usage is now up
to 74MB, so Eclipse will not experience nearly as many page faults.