Mac Mini running very slow..

[advocation]

I've just got a mac mini at work, with the standard 512 ram, but I cant believe how slow it is! I have Finder, Firefox, TextWrangler, iTunes and MSN running and it laggs whenever I type! Its terrible..

Is there anything I can do to speed it up? I dont really wanna ask for more ram as it was hard enough getting a mac in an all windows office!!

Thanks.

 

[djstarrock]

you could remove some programs, if iLife is installed it takes up alot of space and printer drivers and languages take some space I can't remember the name of the program thats deletes that stuff right now. But your best bet is to add ram.

 

[dartzorichalcos]

You could try Bye Bye Dashboard and set the computer to better performance.

 

[motulist]

Mac Mini running very slow..

Then you should have no trouble catching it!

Seriously though, like dartzorichalcos said, try changing the energy saver settings to highest. Though in my experience, this makes the forefront application faster at the expense of the background applications. Also, open up activity monitor and check to see where your system resources are being used to see if there's any easy way to cut the fat. Make sure you have a minimum of 2 to 4 gig free on your hard disk. I've heard someone say that one tiny trick to really tweak the last bits of performance out of a Mac you should keep a disc in the optical drive so that the OS doesn't have to keep polling the drive to see if a disk has been inserted, but I'm not saying that myself, just passing it along, so don't hold me to it.

 

[emptyCup]

Removing unneeded languages and programs will only give you more disk space. You need more memory (which might be worth buying yourself since it is inconveniencing you) or you need to run fewer programs at the same time.

 

[dartzorichalcos]

Check this out too.

 

[motulist]

And just so you know, lag between when you type and when you see the result on screen while doing normal level activity is NOT typical behavior for any mac I've ever used. I've never used a mini, but I can't believe that's normal. Either one of the programs you're running is hogging resources (I'm looking at you MSN) or something is wrong with your computer.

When you're experiencing lag, quit 1 program and see if the lag disappears and does not return for awhile (I'd say about a half hour is a sufficient test). If the lag doesn't go away after quitting that app, reopen it and quit another app, and cycle through quitting each one to see if you can identify the culprit.