Mac Mini 2007 Performance Issues or Chrome

Hi,

I just got a second hand Mac Mini 2007 on eBay for £200, but it is annoyingly sluggish running chrome browser. Its running 10.7.5 with 3 gigs of ram, 1.83 core 2 duo, and a crucial ssd.

I just need it for watching youtube and surfing the web, but it is pretty poor at those things.

For some reason youtube videos stutter a lot when on Chrome. Safari is ok at playing them. When I launch Chrome and restore 10 tabs, I am waiting for all the tabs to load for at least a minute or two. gmail takes 10 times longer to load in chrome than in safari.

I just looked at the temps - see screenshot - https://www.dropbox.com/s/pjr1lc2536d81o3/Screen Shot 2014-07-04 at 20.14.51.png

Then another issue - Wifi doesn't automatically connect when waking from sleep. Manually connecting gives a strong signal which is puzzling.

I am thinking of possibly returning it and getting a refurbed mac mini for double the price. Its a bit of a shame because I don't really have very demanding needs for it and its just a bit too slow to be used on the occasional basis.

Intell said:

Does this happen with Firefox? Chrome isn't the best browser for loading many tabs at once or with tabs that lots of moving things in it on older computers like a 2007 Mini.

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Just downloaded Firefox and it was taking 12 minutes to download 50MBs so I moved the router and now the speed has increased a lot. That hopefully will help with the WIFI issue.

Firefox is running fast too. So it seems its just a Chrome issue. This is a shame as I prefer chrome. I have cleared out the cache and cookies but still no luck.

Intell said:

I think Chrome's problem is how it handles multiple threads. Firefox and Safari do most of their work within one primary thread. Chrome has a different thread per tab and on a machine with only two threads, like a 2007 Mac Mini, it can cause the whole machine to slow down as ten threads for ten tabs fight for resources.

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Firefox is just a bit slow when scrolling with the mouse wheel. Safari doesn't have this problem. Safari is an OK browser but I miss the features of chrome like middle mouse closing tabs, and autofilling URLs from History is always too far down the list.