Reply #109: Mac Mini needs more RAM out of the box

[B3Nut]

512MB isn't enough if you're running any large apps. I deployed the latest $799 Mini (1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) in the advertising department and attempting to run Photoshop or Illustrator (still not recompiled for the Intel chip yet, they run under the Rosetta translation engine) turned the little Mini into an expensive doorstop. Dog slow. My old PPC603-based Performa 6200CD (Apple's worst motherboard design ever, crippling the PPC chip...Michael Spindler oversaw the making of that wretched abortion, yet I loved that dumpy computer anyway) ran Photoshop faster. Maxing the Mini's RAM at 2GB sped it up considerably.

If you're just going to run Safari, iTunes, and iWork, the stock config works OK. Beyond that, get at least a gig, 2GB preferably. Hell, that goes for any system nowadays. Vista should have at least a gig (at 1GB my laptop seems happy, though I have 2GB in my Vista desktop)...indeed, we're finding XP to need 1GB these days for point-of-sale apps, odd crashes at 512MB went away when the RAM was doubled.

To touch on the OP, I haven't run into that issue with Vista (we're testing it in-house and on home systems). We're liking it a lot so far, I definitely prefer it to XP, OS X, and any Linux distro I've tried. I'll keep an eye out for any issues, but it's been great so far. Oh, and with the latest version of Boot Camp, Vista runs on an Intel Mac. :D

Todd in Beerbratistan