My machine keeps 'freezing' before eventaully logging out with all the programs exiting. This is rather annoying, and I think its because I keep running out of memory. I am not running any custom software, just netbeans, chrome etc. (Stuff I usually run on other ubuntu computers without issue).

For some reason my memory usage is through the roof as seen here, but I can't quite figure out why. Here is a screenshot which may be useful with htop and gnome-system monitor open as user and as root.

I notice that my console-kit-daemon is taking up about a gig of 'virtual memory'. Is that normal?

Any tips/advice will be helpful. In the meantime I have ordered 2 x 4 gig ram sticks to try and just throw hardware at the issue.