how to read top output correctly

[lostson]

 Hello all I have a interesting question I use top in a terminal all the time and was wondering the proper way to read the memory usage in it. For instance currently my top says this 

 Mem:   1034948k total,  1008860k used,    26088k free,    96856k buffers


 Now I have 1gig of memory in this machine and I only have 26088 free this seems wrong to me but what confuses me is what is buffers ?? Is this memory that is allocated to some programs ? it seems to me my free should be alot more 1gig of memory should be more than sufficient. I am running gnome as my desktop and have a few programs running but that is about it. So where does all my memory go ? Thanks.

< ------ >
lostson 

http://lostsonsvault.org
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