ram

Question One...How much ram do you have now ?

Question Two.. What do you use the computer for ?

Question Three. What computer do you have ?

You can get 8GB of RAM for $40-50. Make sure your parents know it's not as expensive as they fear.

You can always say that the programs you use (just say its photoshop, they wont check ) require lots of RAM. And the 2GB is just for people who use the Mini for safari and mail or something that could've been done on a 7 year old mac. Say that if you get more RAM you can finish your work quicker and more efficiently. And therefore you will have more time for other things.

Another reason would be that in order for you to use the mini for as long as possible you need to upgrade parts in it, in this case the RAM. Through in that if you dont get the RAM then you'll need a new computer earlier (doubt they would want to pay a new computer rather than 50$ RAM )

Hope it works, my little brother just said that he needs more RAM, he's paying it but cant order it, so whats the problem, not like my mum is making a loss if she gets the money . It did work you know

Earn the money, buy the Ram...install.

the mac docter said:

i tried all of the stuff you said. i told them that it would increase application bootup speed and increase productivity. my dad says that $50 is a waste of money when it could be spent on something else. he also said that in like two years it will be like $20 (complete load of $&%*). im desperate for resaons to get more ram my dad is extremely stubborn. im sick and tired of seeing beachballs everywhere i go.

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Rather than trying to tell your Dad why it's needed, why not show him? If you're getting beach balls often, show him the problems low RAM is causing. If seeing it doesn't convince him, I'm afraid your best option is....

Nukemkb said:

Earn the money, buy the Ram...install.

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Pay slightly less for 4 Gb of ram and that would be more than enough for what you do....($33.00 4 gigs)

If your folks are computer intelligent, than you are not going to sway them one way or the other.

I had 2 gigs on my system for a few hours and used the computer for what you are doing now, than later I installed 4 more gigs and noticed absolutely no difference in performance. Now I have 8 gigs and that is because I can buy my own stuff

the mac docter said:

i have the money but my dad thinks its a waste of money to spend my money on it. and yes my dad is an intelligent person when it comes to computers. also is it normal to have 100mb of excess ram when i use safari bye itself? not running anything else.

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You can always just go into a hardware store and see how much it costs there and buy it, only if it worth it, but it will most likely be 10-20 $ more. Then your dad wont have to order it.

You mean you only have 100MB free when doing nothing but safari?
If yes, id say it nearly normal. Safari loads videos and stuff into the RAM. So it start using lots of RAM.

Also Lion uses lots of RAM anyway. 2GB is really only the bare minimum for a system running Lion. Especially because you actually only have 1.75 GB available (GPU needs 256MB)

Basically your parents are wasting your time as 2gb ram causes slowdowns on a 2011 base mac mini. Buying 1 stick of 4gb ram would fix the problem. Why not offer to wash the family car. Or some other chores to get some money to buy just one 4gb stick of ram.

philipma1957 said:

Basically your parents are wasting your time as 2gb ram causes slowdowns on a 2011 base mac mini. Buying 1 stick of 4gb ram would fix the problem. Why not offer to wash the family car. Or some other chores to get some money to buy just one 4gb stick of ram.

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I am sure there are some who are upgrading the 4 Gb to 8 Gb and perhaps one of them feels sorry for you and will mail you the old 4 Gb - it is not likely they'll get a lot of money for it.

(I live by the motto of "you reap what you sow", common guys who is kind to this kid, after all it sounds like he is not having parents that roll in the dough. Kids do not always understand money has to be hard worked for and times can be tough for the parents....)

He did mention at one point that he already has the money.

the mac docter said:

firstly i live in the middle of nowhere! i can't go to a computer store to buy it. my dad says if i did buy it he'd break it in half and take it away from me.

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Well that's silly. Breaking it half is certainly a waste of money already spent. Not exactly a logical thing to do.

the mac docter said:

firstly i live in the middle of nowhere! i can't go to a computer store to buy it. my dad says if i did buy it he'd break it in half and take it away from me.

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It sounds like your dad is trying to teach you some type of lesson. I'm not quite sure what that is though..

damn, sounds crap.

I guess if you want to be a rebel, buy it at one point when you can, dont tell him, and hide the old RAM and then hope he wont check your financials and your system information.

But seriously, you can try to show him exactly why you need it, maybe he will understand at one point. But dont ask daily, he'll get annoyed and then never buy it. Go to him in like a week again or so.

BTW: Unless you really hate pages id suggest you dont use Microsoft word when you have little RAM. I say this because right now im using it because I have too for an essay. I have two versions of my 1500 word essay open, each is 29KB in size. Well Word is hogging 2.22 GB out of my 8GB of RAM. What the hell?? So yeh, id recomend pages, I always use pages, i use word like once every month or two. and i never see pages go above 150-250MB in RAM. Only when i put images into it and stuff like that.

Perhaps his dad is trying to teach him a lesson: patience perhaps?

Junior, when you are young it nearly always looks that you cannot live without something. And waiting? Well, it really is the pits. I do not know what you need the computer for and how old you are which is also a part of the unknown for us trying to give you an answer.

However it is not that long ago that oldies like myself (and your father) had to make do with very little RAM - when Windows XP came out 128 Mb was all that was recommended. Up to about 3 years ago I was running XP (did not like to go to Vista) and I had only 384 Mb (one 256 and one 128 M stick) in my machine. It was more than enough. 15 years ago I was running a classroom with 50 students on a 475DX with 20 Mb of Ram and two 300 Mb SCSI HDD.

Now I've got a Windows 7 machine with 4 Gb and most of the time it is using only 1.6 Gb and I have never seen it above 2 Gb. OS X is working in a different way than Windows 7 but for us oldies it sounds next to crazy to hear that a machine requires 4 or 8 Gb of Ram while the whole installation is what... 12 Gb?

My guess is that your father wants to teach you something and that he has really dug in. From what you are posting it sounds like it is not all about money (since you already saved it up), more about the value of money. Perhaps the money is "burning" in your pocket and you are eager to do something with it? (not trying to pick on you, just thinking out aloud here and trying to be helpful)

I noticed that you posted somewhere else a question about SSD. Personally think that in order to get rid of the beach balling you will need the 4 Gb and also a SSD (I certainly do not want to go back to a HDD).

But then you are starting to talk about some serious money on top of what the computer already cost. For the minimum amount of time savings that you are getting (no beach balling) you'll have to ask yourself perhaps: 1) How much time do I have to work to save up the money? Then you ask yourself: 2) How much time do I save once I get this upgrade?

If you have to work more hours to save up than it is going to save time (using the upgraded memory and SSD) then surely it is not worth spending the money? ( After all time is not something we can buy and it is only in limited supply - I do not know anyone living to 200, do you? <wink>)

Hopefully soon enough you'll understand that life is not always either black or white but there is also grey between. Just become thoroughly familiar with your new Mac mini now and then in 3 or 6 months revisit the memory and SSD. You may find that you rather buy something else (e.g. a nice iPod) than the SSD and memory. Remember also: patience is a virtue!

Best of luck!

Me thinks that good old Dad knows something about his son that we don't, and perhaps we should leave this matter to the family now

Does your Dad use Macs and if so does he use Mac OS Lion? If not what OS does he use?

How much RAM is in his machine?

So it sounds like your Dad doesn't know much about computers, particularly not about Macs. You need more than the bare minimum required specs generally to get a good experience. Apple never should have sold the 2011 base Mac Mini with 2GB RAM.

Even with 3GB RAM on my ageing MacBook, I still get swapping from light usage, however it is less often than with 2GB RAM. All my Mac Minis have 4GB RAM.

the mac docter said:

my dad has a windows (boo!) 7 computer with 8gbs of ddr3 ram at 1666mhz a quad core intel core i7 and a dedicated gpu with 2gb of ddr5. not shure what its make is. he just got like half a year ago. the funny thing is that he barely knows how to use it, and is always asking me how to use it.

and mjl are you like my dad or something? thats what my dad always says is that its "burning" a hole in my pocket

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What does he use this computer for? Also, make your case based on his computer, how it is useless to him since its much more power than what he needs it for and how THAT is a waste of cash vs $50 on your RAM which apparently you need.

the mac docter said:

my dad has a windows (boo!) 7 computer with 8gbs of ddr3 ram at 1666mhz a quad core intel core i7 and a dedicated gpu with 2gb of ddr5. not shure what its make is. he just got like half a year ago. the funny thing is that he barely knows how to use it, and is always asking me how to use it.

and mjl are you like my dad or something? thats what my dad always says is that its "burning" a hole in my pocket

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No, your dad does not sound the same. Honestly I cannot see a need for myself for 8 Gb of RAM under Windows 7. A graphics card like that may be usefull if you want to run 4 or 8 monitors (e.g. trading the stock market) but cannot see it usefull for just a single one.

Although in the past I have bought (with my own money) the fastest laptop I could get my hands on (sometimes every 8 months) it was always a requirement of the work I was doing and nothing less would do. Basically I used to be a hardware and software architect and worked with the largest computers around (with VERY large databases).

These days I only buy the minimum required for the tasks at hand (no longer designing computer systems) and what I can foresee what's required for the next year. Next years lowest model in the same series is often better than todays top model. Has been like that since I started (first used computers in 1969 and then for a living 1985 onwards) and I cannot see it changing soon. I like the compactness of the mid 2010 mac mini (has built in DVD) but am looking at adding another one in a years time. That may either be the i5 2.3 or the i5 2.5 w/ GPU, both 4 Gb of RAM. At long last I have learned to wait since prices keep on dropping every day, no rush.

To give you an idea on prices: In 1967 I went to varsity and the science department just got a grant to buy their first (!) electronic calculator. It used nixie tubes, could add, subtract, multiply, divide and do the square root. The price was that of a small new car.... In 1985 an IBM XT PC with two 5 1/4" floppies and 128K of memory was the price of the same small car.... That year I worked on a Sperry Univac 90-2 which was at the time the second largest in Europe.... Pricetag was in the order of 40 M. Now the PC has more computing power....

I have a need for running Windows and initially thought about running it under Parallels (hence the upgrade of the memory to 4 Gb) but performance is inadequate so installed Windows as the only OS on the internal disk ( and removed os x mainly due to issues with backup and recovery when both are on the same hard disk ). I could have kept the 2 Gb memory, it is sufficient for my needs. But I did replace the HDD with a SSD, it made a large difference.

I suppose both your dad and myself grew up in a different era - these days because of the internet the younger generation all want it "now" and cannot wait. In our days people still wrote letters to the other side of the world since telephone calls were expensive so you might have to wait 3 weeks before you saw a reply (to get a price). Thus an order may be 2 - 3 months before you had the goods. Letters had to be either written or typed on a typewriter and you better did not make too many typing mistakes. No spell checkers in those days....

Be happy you got a new computer and try not to fight your parents. My suggestion would be to say nothing now (since it will only go the wrong way) and then ask for Christmas a new SSD (80 Gb is enough, use the old one as an external) with 4 Gb RAM and who knows they might appreciate that you did not hassle them.

Take care and good luck.