From talking to apple yesterday because I was having a similar issue, I have the macbook pro I got late 2010 and mine is the 17” i7 2.66 mhz and 8g of ram. The way they explained it is the computer grabs the necessary memory to run the program you are opening or say movie you are watching online and even though you are no longer using the program it doesn’t always release it from use unless the computer is restarted. They suggested to do a daily restart because I tend to leave my computer running for days, they said this will release all the memory being held but not used. – I hope this helps. I don’t know about you but I got the applecare and have the unlimited techsupport on mine.