Mac Mini Intel – Waaaaay Slow?

I had my first hands-on experience with a Mac Mini Core Solo with 512MB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive — in other words, the low-end of today’s modern Mac Mini. And I’ve got to say, it was extremely underwhelming performance-wise. Most disconcerting to me were some slow startups of applications — Microsoft Word is a bad culprit, although neither Safari or Mail seemed to fly — and I saw some bizarrely slow window re-draws when switching between various apps. Photoshop took *forever* to get started up, although it draws and paints fine once launched. (I didn’t do anything high-end.)

I say this because in the same client’s office (I’m their “Mac guy”) we have a Mac Mini G4 1.25GHz machine that very nicely drives an Apple 23-inch display, happily running Quark 7 and a host of other apps. I had to pry it open with a crowbar to get the RAM in it…it may have a full Gig, if memory serves, which could account for some of the difference…but, still, that Mac Mini is a perfectly serviceable machine for office work.

Perhaps this is to be expected as the Mac OS and its applications once again goes through a processor-bridging period, but I’m curious since I haven’t had much personal experience with Intel-chip machines — is everyone living with some *bad* slowdowns and sluggish experiences on Intel-based Macs? Or are MacBooks and iMacs better than Mac Minis?

update: Over at Barefeats I came across a Mac Mini shootout that might explain some of what I was seeing — it sounds like the graphics subsystem is pretty poor on the new Mini, including the fact that it uses system RAM (sometimes upwards of 80MB), which makes 512MB kinda anemic. Sigh.

May 28, 2006 · Filed Under General Stuff