[idfjr]

Hi, this is my first post here, so please be gentle with me! Also, I know very little about computers, so please don't laugh at my simple question: I've just bought a mac mini 1.83 with 1GB RAM, and it just seems slow. I previously had a Sony laptop which was about 4 yrs old, and that seemed quicker. I can't remember the speed of that (it was a Pentium 4 chip if that helps) and it only had 256 MB RAM, so surely this mac mini should be like lightning compared with that?
It's not just when I use the internet, and I'm still with the same ISP (tiscali, yes I know they're rubbish!)
How can I check it's working OK?
Thanks for your help :-)
Idfjr

[edmetric]

Quote:

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I've just bought a mac mini 1.83 with 1GB RAM, and it just seems slow.

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First of all, Apple devotees don't know the word slow. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif Everything Apple is best, fast, wonderful. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif The only thing to do is actually measure the computer.
What kinds of and how much extra software are you running?
Download the free iStat Pro widget from Apple. It will objectively measure lots of things in your computer.

Then open Activity Monitor in your computer. It is found in the Applications/Utilities folder. That will measure the computer activity.

Then get a stopwatch and time how long it takes to boot, how long it takes for a program to load, and how long it takes for a process such as ripping to complete. Then ask your question again for comparisons to other users.

Check out the 123macmini site for more info.
I'm using a 2GHz C2D mini and, like in Goldilocks and the three bears, it is just right. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[parka]

Try running Disk Utility and fixing the permissions and see what happens.

[mdawson]

Welcome to the Macworld forums.
A Core Duo Mac mini should be substantially faster than any 4 year-old Pentium system, but a number of factors could be slowing down your system. As edmetric suggested, opening Activity Monitor in ~/Applications/Utilities will allow you to see memory and CPU usage. You can also see which processes on your computer are eating up processing cycles. For instantaneous feedback on computer activity consider downloading a copy of MenuMeters. MenuMeters will allow you to see network activity, memory and CPU usage in your menubar.
On a brand new system, repairing permissions should not be necessary, but it definitely would not hurt to run a scan on your system drive using Disk Utility. Disk Utility is also in the ~/Applications/Utilities directory.
In all, the original PowerPC G4 Mac mini was relatively zippy as long as tasks were kept to rudimentary computer use (e.g., Web browsing, e-mail, chatting, word processing, etc.) and not too many applications were open simultaneously. Your Mac mini has a more powerful CPU, a second processing core, four times the memory and a faster hard drive. Granted if you just purchased the Mac mini it should have Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and therefore the operating system has a little more overhead than Tiger (10.4), but it should not be enough to bog down your computer. In general, newer versions of OS X are better optimized and, therefore, run more efficiently on contemporary systems.