Running super slow in an office environment

[dpearman2007]

Hey all,

I have about 30 mac minis in the office I work in, but I myself have a 15MBPr (correct abbreviation, not sure, sorry if it isn't.) Anyway so we have about 30 minis, all purchased brand new from Apple over the last 1.5yrs. They're all baseline models with 4GB of RAM still, and a traditional HDD. The folks that use them do so with typical office programs, Chrome with anywhere from 4-15 tabs open depending on how organized they are. They'll also have hip chat open, an inter office IM program. They might also have Numbers open or Open Office. Some might have Spotify as well, in addition to Notes and probably Messages. I remember using the mini and it locking up/getting REALLY slow all the time, then I switched positions and got a 13" MBA, and that thing could fly. Now on the 15" retina and I'm most certainly spoiled. So all of these minis are for the most part running rather slow, sometimes simple things like opening spotlight or system preference can be a task of several seconds and some beach balling. I've taken a look from time to time at the activity monitor on some of them and it seems like Chrome is quite the RAM hog, and the physical RAM usage usually hovering about 3.5GB or even closer to the max capacity of 4GB. My question is, what should we do to help put some more pep in the step of said minis? I'm pretty sure some are the minis that have upgradable RAM, but I doubt all of them are. So is there something software wise I could do to help them out? Should I look into upgrading the RAM to 8GB, would that help make a difference? I know that the activity monitor has reached 4GB at the very moment I've opened it, but that doesn't mean it does all the time, but I know it definitely has, I'm just not sure how much to trust the activity monitor. The other thought would be to upgrade the HDD to small SSDs. How much of an undertaking would it be to upgrade the HDD of a mini to an SSD and copy over the data. Thanks for any input!

 

[treekram]

You don't specify what model of the Macbook Air you were comparing against, but your MBP Retina has 4x the memory and an SSD vs. a 5400rpm HDD of the base Mini. It also looks like you have the quad-core, vs. the dual-core of the Mini. If you have the 2015 MBP Retina, the SSD is really fast, up to 2x faster that the 2014 models.

Find out which model of Mini you have - likely it's the 2014 model - 1.4 GHz. (Press the Apple logo on the top left and select "About This Mac".) You can see why your MBP is much faster than the Mini's you have.

If you do have the 2014 model, the RAM cannot be upgraded. An SSD can be put in the 2014 model, but you'll have to swap it with the HDD. SSD's which have an Apple-proprietary PCIe connector can be added along with the HDD, but you can only get those on the used market (i.e., eBay) - maybe Apple will sell them separately to favored corporate customers but they don't sell them to consumers. SSD replacement in the 2014 model is not easy - numerous people have broken components while doing it. See the following for the steps to do this:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac+Mini+Late+2014+Hard+Drive+Replacement/32815

If you have the 2012 model (not likely), you can upgrade the RAM and add an SSD to the existing HDD but it's still not easy (perhaps slightly easier than it is with the 2014 model).

An easier upgrade would be to add an external SSD - either USB or Thunderbolt (more expensive). But in some offices, something like that would evolve, grow legs and walk away.