When your primary workstation is a laptop, which won't accept more than 8GB of RAM, and you have to use certain Java based desktop apps, everywhere you can save memory is useful.

I agree it should not be an issue, but when the usual short-sighted budget issues are the primary problem, one has to use other tricks:

"You mean the 3 year old machine you work on for 12 hours a day is no longer good enough? Sorry, that does not fit the depreciation model. Also, we spent all the budget on new MacBook Airs for Sales, because they really needed new web browsers."