A Conversation for "The Orchard" - the h2g2 Mac Users' Group!
Slow Mac Mini
laconian Started conversation Apr 14, 2006
http://www.macworld.com/2006/04/firstlooks/xpbenchmarks/index.php
Though this article is interesting in it's own right, the thing that caught my eye was this:
"Noticeably absent from the table is the Mac mini Core Duo which had trouble completing the test suite (the multitasking test in particular). "
about halfway down the page. I have an old PowerPC Mac Mini, and it has problems with multitasking too. Yes, mine isn't exactly top-of-the-range (1.42GHz, 256 MB RAM), and I do tend to go overboard with the number of programs open, but I have been wondering whether this is a problem with other, newer, Mac Minis? And whether, compared with other Macs of a similar spec, they are slower?
Slow Mac Mini
Peet (the Pedantic Punctuation Policeman, Muse of Lateral Programming Ideas, Eggcups-Spurtle-and-Spoonswinner, BBC Cheese Namer & Zaphodista) Posted Apr 14, 2006
It sounds just as likely that it's a software bug in the Mac Mini's OS that's screwing up multi-tasking. I've seen "straight" benchmarks that put the new Intel machines between three and *ten* times as fast as the originals!
Slow Mac Mini
laconian Posted Apr 14, 2006
Perhaps if I come into some money I'll get an Intel Mac. I'm very interested in the Boot Camp idea. All of my computer games are for PC, so it would makes things easier in that respect. The only problem is that, according to that article, Minis do not cope well with XP, so I'll have to spend a lot more on an iMac (a nicer machine in all respects, but I'm not made of money 
).
Slow Mac Mini
dElaphant (and Zeppo his dog (and Gummo, Zeppos dog)) - Left my apostrophes at the BBC Posted Apr 17, 2006
I wouldn't give that article too much credibility. 1st, Boot Camp is still beta software, so evaluating the performance is interesting but not very helpful, things could change drastically by the time it is actually ships with OS X 10.5. 2nd, Boot Camp as far as I know was not released for the mini - it was announced for the MacBook and the iMac, and required a firmware patch for the iMac (I'm not sure if the MacBook needed one too). So it might just be that the mini needs a firmware update, or Boot Camp needs some adjustments to work properly on the mini, or needs some additional drivers that are not included in the boot camp disk image - it's beta so at this point it's all guesswork.
Give it a few months before you make a serious evaluation. 
Key: Complain about this post
Slow Mac Mini
- 1: laconian (Apr 14, 2006)
- 2: Peet (the Pedantic Punctuation Policeman, Muse of Lateral Programming Ideas, Eggcups-Spurtle-and-Spoonswinner, BBC Cheese Namer & Zaphodista) (Apr 14, 2006)
- 3: laconian (Apr 14, 2006)
- 4: dElaphant (and Zeppo his dog (and Gummo, Zeppos dog)) - Left my apostrophes at the BBC (Apr 17, 2006)
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