Performance issue with Mac Mini...

[Red10]

Evening chaps.

I've had my Mac Mini a few months now and i'm begging to notice a problem with it.

It's the 80Gb, 1.2Ghz (?) version with 1Gb RAM, running Tiger.

The performace is progressively getting worse; it started out as being quite nippy, and overall i was happy. Now, 2 months or so later, it's taking longer for apps to open, the mouse is getting jittery - it [the cursor] doesnt' glide across the screen and most worryingly, apps are begining to hang - even force quit doesn't kill them.

I'm usually listening to itunes, working in Word or Excel and have Messenger and Firefox minimised.

Any ideas why the performance is getting so poor, has anyone else had this problem?

Cheers

Dan.

[bsodmike]

Do you have many Widgets active? Take a look @ Activity Monitor and sort out by CPU usage, and keep an eye on memory as well. I got a slightly faster mini and has been running since May and I haven't noticed any slowdowns.

It has Azureus leeching 24/7, and Safari running most of the time, then I watch DVDs n' vids via VLC as it is the *htpc* after all.

Also, how are you on disk space?

[Red10]

Do you have many Widgets active? Take a look @ Activity Monitor and sort out by CPU usage, and keep an eye on memory as well. I got a slightly faster mini and has been running since May and I haven't noticed any slowdowns.

It has Azureus leeching 24/7, and Safari running most of the time, then I watch DVDs n' vids via VLC as it is the *htpc* after all.

Also, how are you on disk space?

Ahhh, i've just realised, Dashboard is constantly minimised, isn't it? i.e. it's running in the background and so the more widgets, the more performance is affected... I'll check that...

I've got PLENTY of disk space free...

Cheers Mike.

[bsodmike]

np. Yes - more widgets running, the more they eat up RAM. If you've got over 1GB of RAM it isn't such a problem but with just 1GB depending on how many you got loaded it could affect performance.

Take care, Mike

[Jonny M]

Or just disable dashboard

[bsodmike]

If you’d like to disable Dashboard, for either RAM usage or other reasons, here’s how to do it. It requires a trip to the Terminal, in /Applications/Utilities, but it’s not too hard to do.

Open Terminal, and then type this command, followed by the Return key:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

This tells the system that you no longer wish to have Dashboard available. However, the Dashboard task is actually “owned” by the Dock, so to make your changes take effect, you need to restart the Dock. The easiest way to do that is to type this command into the Terminal (and press Return when done):

killall Dock

After the Dock restarts, hit F12 and you’ll see…nothing at all. If you run Activity Monitor, you also won’t find any Dashboard widgets in the list of tasks, even if you had several open when you ran the above command. Dashboard has been eliminated from your system, and won’t return until you tell it to do so. You can do just that by opening Terminal again, and typing this command:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

Once again, you’ll have to use the killall Dock command to make the changes take effect. Once you do, though, you’ll find that Dashboard is back as usual—and any widgets you had opened on the Dashboard will still be open.

[tommylittleboy@]

I have noticed a performance issue too wrt dashboard. It seems that each time I reboot the mini, then load dashboard again...there is a very long wait before the widgets are displayed properly with all content etc. You're right when you say that dashboard is a resource hog, and even though I'm fond of it...I may have a go disabling it or at least removing some of the open widgets.

I find that doing a repair permissions in disk utility helps things too.

[bsodmike]

tommy: Sometimes the delay is not because of resources exactly. I.e. if you have many weather widgets, clocks and other widgets that need net access they will appear 'hung' until they get the data they need. Therefore response time would be proportional to the speed of your net connection and available bandwidth. However, dashboard does (ofc) run slower with the mini especially if you got many of them running, but usually this is due to hogging available RAM.

[tommylittleboy@]

tommy: Sometimes the delay is not because of resources exactly. I.e. if you have many weather widgets, clocks and other widgets that need net access they will appear 'hung' until they get the data they need. Therefore response time would be proportional to the speed of your net connection and available bandwidth. However, dashboard does (ofc) run slower with the mini especially if you got many of them running, but usually this is due to hogging available RAM.

Indeed, I have got quite a few which need to download data from the net...especially the BBC radio widget. It runs fine normally, but initially, that is when I have the delay....I guess its just the 32MB grafx stuggling to load all the widgets at once which causes the hang...Heres a screenie anyway
My Dashboard

[Red10]

Update of an old thread...

The performance issues with my mini are still very much apparent.

I've been using Word and iTunes + Firefox and Thunderbird - quite literally the only apps running and the performance is creeky, it takes a good second or so to render a page in FF, word displays the "spinning spectrum disk thing" even when executing minor operations... It just feels laggy and lethargic, my little iBook is a dream compared to this - it flies...

Any other suggestions?

I'm thinking about moving up a notch with the Mac if this continues and going for the PowerMac G5....

[Nick F]

Have you turned off spotlight?

[Red10]

Have you turned off spotlight?

No, that's just too hurrendous a thing to contemplate....