Mac Mini speed issues

Again, I'm not looking to Apple bash here, I just want to make sure this computer isn't defective.

A while back, my mother purchased a Mac Mini from our local Apple Store (the first one, actually, in Tysons Corner VA). We got it all set up and working, and it seemed pretty good (I apologize, I can't remember the exact model at the moment).

The problem now is that the computer is SLOOOOOW! I mean much slower than it ought to be. It just takes forever to do pretty much anything. What do I look for to troubleshoot this?

At first I thought it might be tied to flash in Firefox (her browser of choice), but even when I stop that (using that task manager equivalent in OSX) it doesn't seem like things improve much.

I don't think the system is getting tasked much. My mother uses Firefox and MS Office (which I guess could be a culprit). She looks at PDFs and prints stuff. You know, usual stuff. So I don't know why the computer is so darn slow!

Thanks for any help you can offer.

How much RAM does it have ?

Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor can be very useful in spotting things hogging the processor etc... Do you see anything there at all ???

Cheers

Cris

Also, check if the hard drive is approaching full. Filesystems don't fare so well when running out of space.

Depending on the age of the mini and the OS it has, you might be looking at an impossible situation. The only solution would be going back to an older OS.

Older Mac models with newer OS releases and updates are becoming incapable of performing even the most basic of computing tasks such as surfing the web.

My 2004 PowerBook used to be plenty fast for all kinds of uses, but with the latest OS version and updates it can take, it can't realistically be used even when restricted to running only Safari. It's currently sporting the last version of Mac OS 10.5 but I should probably re-install the older 10.4. The big issue then is the older version of Safari or many other browser alternatives, won't work with some sites. No Google sites with the exception of search for starters. Since my wife uses GMail this would be an even bigger PITA than the constant freezing and sluggish behavior that exists now.

Another thread brought back. Sorry about that. I finally got around to checking up on my mom's Mac Mini and I think it's really going to come down to RAM.

First, the Mini is a 2.3GHz Core i5 model w/2GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM. It came with Lion installed.

Here was the memory information I observed when the computer was running no more than a freshly-opened instance of Firefox and MS Word:

150MB Free
663MB Wired
916MB Active
339MB Inactive
1.89GB Used

At this state, things were terribly slow. I would say unacceptably slow. Frankly, I was a little shocked that Apple would ship such a product, which is why I'm still expecting it to be a hardware defect of some sort. It really is that slow - the kind of slowness where there's even a delay in text showing up when typing. That's just unacceptable in computing these days for ANY type of shipping product.

The thing that gets me is that this is my mom we're talking about. She's not using CAD software, gaming, video encoding, or anything nearly that intensive. She's browsing the web and creating Word files! Yes, Apple was selling two models (as they still are) when she purchased this computer. She could have gotten the 4GB model with a faster CPU and bigger hard drive. But really, the base model should be better than this, and that's why I'm left thinking it's a defect, because I'd be surprised there wasn't a bigger outcry if Apple were shipping computers this bad...

I'm happy to go order more/replacement RAM if that's everything that I need to do to get this Mini working like an actual computer from the last couple years, but I worry that there's something else wrong, and would rather not waste the money.

Honestly, stop running Firefox, it's a total and complete piece of shit. And I'm surprised it's only trying to use 1.9GB of memory on your 2GB system and not 20GB. To be perfectly honest, you'd be better off running Internet Explorer 9 in Windows 7 on top of VMWare on that Mac.

If you can't or won't run Safari (which has its own issues), run Chrome.

Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that too. My mom seems to really like Firefox for whatever reason, mostly because it's what she used on Windows.

Still, even when Firefox isn't running, there are still speed issues. Yes, Firefox slows it down, but if something else were open it would be nearly as bad.

Wow. Do your hate-ons usually give you problems with reading comprehension?

That's not Firefox using 1.9GB, that's total memory used, including the OS. My Mac Mini (quad core i7 w/4GB RAM, all of a month old) has:

Free: 967MB
Wired: 1.10GB
Active 1.42GB
Inactive: 640MB
Used: 3.05GB

My top RAM usage:

kernel_task (485MB)
Jenkins java client (267MB)
mds (254MB)
installd (99MB)
ruby (71MB -- this is a test harness for our build process)
Terminal (65MB)
loginwindow (58MB)
WindowServer (58MB)
storeagent (43MB)
Finder (35MB)
Python (31MB -- this is part of our build/test process)
Dock (30MB)

So dropping Terminal, and the stuff from our build processes, that's over 1GB just for the OS and services, before I start nickel and diming all the other little crap that's running (but taking less than 30MB each).

A freshly loaded Safari adds 70MB, FWIW. Since this Mini isn't intended as a desktop, I haven't bothered to install FF.

Is it possible to put more than 4GB in the Mini?

Yes, I have 8GB in mine. IIRC the newest will go to 16GB like the MacBook Pros.

As ever crucial.com is the place to go for the definitive answer:

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.a...0-%20Mid%202011

16GB in this case would be complete overkill though

I know it wasn't Firefox using all 1.9GB. But it would not surprise me to see it using more than that - because I already have seen it on my own systems.

Have they fixed all the memory leaks they've been after for the past 5 years? I didn't think so because I keep seeing memory leak issues in their release notes.

Firefox has a single draw for most people from what I've seen over the years. Add-ons. Because the browser itself has really always been "meh." The only reason to use it now is really only to stop Google from gaining any more share. Which isn't a bad thing. And it's always been far better in Windows than it has been for Mac OS.

At least if it's a Windows experience that Matt's mom likes, Firefox should be pretty similar on the Mac, since it's not much anything like a Mac app.

Lion is also pretty slow (not to mention buggy) on hardware that didn't come with it pre-installed, but I always hoped it would be much better on systems that shipped with it. I would not have expected a modest system like that to need more than 2GB.

Agreed. This is what's puzzling me so much about it. She's really not doing much on the system. And forget memory leaks, it can't handle when Firefox and another program are just opened initially, but again, it could really be any two to three programs.

I'm going to procure some more memory to throw into the thing at some point. I'll update this thread to let you know if it helps. Sorry in advance for bringing this back up

And hey, it's not the end of the world, it's rarely a bad thing to have more RAM...

You're forgetting that back in the day when IE was the only competition in town, Firefox was far more standards compliant with CSS. That was a big draw, at least for developers and anyone who they influenced.

That's why I ran Firefox back in the day. Safari wasn't really any good at the time. BUt I found I had to install far too many plugins, themes and other hacks just to make Firefox itself usable. Then I switched over to the Mac-specific Camino fork of Mozilla for a long time. Then finally gave up on that too.

This is exactly the problem. An Air with Lion, an SSD and 2GB of RAM was usable due to fast swap. A Mini using a laptop hard drive, not so much. Upgrading to 4 or 8 GB will be a massive improvement.

Also, Word is not the most memory friendly or speedy due to it's continued usage of the Carbon API, the older OS 9 based API Apple included to allow devs easy porting to OS X. Unless your mom needs 100% exact Word compatibility, Pages may be worth a look to gain some speed and memory efficiency.

Should Matt be also considering an SSD upgrade? Granted that is a much more expensive upgrade.

For a while I had installed some application called "red quits," which would actually quit the application when the red X was clicked (another annoyance I have with OSX), but that was causing weird stuff, especially with Preview.

I'll definitely add more memory.

New problem with the same Mac Mini:

It sounds like every time the print dialog is brought up, the computer crashes and needs to be restarted. I'll see exactly what is going on tomorrow, but is there an early guess what the problem might be?

My apologies, guys. I think everyone might be able to ignore this entire thread. The latest problem I posted about was traced to a bad backup battery. Once I got to the computer this time I was able to see that when the printer kicked into gear to warm up the fuser, it was clearly drawing more than the little old backup battery could stand, and cutting power to everything plugged into it. Once I ripped the battery out of the mix everything worked fine, and the computer actually seemed to be running a little snappier, but we'll see. I might upgrade the memory anyway just to be safe.

Thanks, though, for all the help here.

Um... you plugged a *printer* into the UPS backup battery?

I guess it's mission-critical to be able to print during a power outage?

Laser printers should not be run off typically smaller home or office UPSes

My old Lexmark Optra Lxn+ used to cause the lights in the room to dim when it fired up.

No need to remove the UPS from the situation, just don't plug the laser printer into it.

As Shonky said, most common UPS systems cannot handle the needed spike power load of a laser printer. Attempting to run a laser printer off a UPS could cause damage to both the printer and the UPS.

Heh, yeah, I'm not sure if I did it or not, but it certainly doesn't belong there, you're right.

All three of the UPS's in this house are split. With half of the outlets only protected but not backed by the battery. So plugging the printer into it, isn't that strange.