I noticed your using 7.1 Are there any performance and fluidity improvements with the OS?
Yes, 7.1 is great. Everything seems much more responsive.
When comparing my 1st generation mini to my retina mini, the animations of opening apps were actually faster on my 1st generation mini. This was because I had 7.1 on my 1st generation mini and 7.0.3 on my retina mini. Now I've updated my retina mini to 7.1, it's faster than the 1st generation in regards to graphics etc.
Also no problems in safari with tabs crashing. 7.1 will be a great release!