1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware.
2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in
plural, footprints). See also {toeprint}.
3. RAM footprint: The minimum amount of RAM which an OS or other
program takes; this figure gives one an idea of how much will be left
for other applications. How actively this RAM is used is another
matter entirely. Recent tendencies to featuritis and software bloat
can expand the RAM footprint of an OS to the point of making it
nearly unusable in practice. [This problem is, thankfully, limited to
operating systems so stupid that they don't do virtual memory -- ESR]
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {ed}{toeprint}]