2010 iMac w/2gigs... nearly all used up with hardly anything running?

[bossxii]

I've had Macbooks in the past with 2 gigs of ram and done far more "multitasking" than I have been on this mini yet I get constant beach balls and looking at Activity Monitor many times with only Mail open, Safari with one tab and iTunes open, not doing anything.. I am down to less than 100mb of usable ram.

Currently looking at the monitor with safari (one tab), mail (idle) and iTunes (idle)

178mb Free
513mb Wired
1028mb Active
339mb Inactive

Showing 1.82GB used.

The obvious solution is to add 2 more gigs, but for the little I use this machine aside from hulu, playing DVD's and such I've never had the beach ball issue as bad on any of my other Mac's with 2 gigs, Macbook, MB Pro 13" and an older iMac.

Something I'm missing here that would cause this to be an issue? or a possible hardware/memory problem? Open to any suggestions.

 

[pooryou]

Free RAM is wasted RAM. Be glad the system is using it for something.

 

[davids8477]

Where's the RAM Being Used?

Why don't you check to see what programs/services are using your RAM - you can do this in Activity Monitor.

 

[WilliamG]

Free RAM is wasted RAM. Be glad the system is using it for something.

That's silly. I'd rather have too much RAM than too little.

 

[DannySmurf]

That's silly. I'd rather have too much RAM than too little.

I'd rather the machine use all the RAM I pay for, instead of letting it sit around doing nothing.

 

[AbSoluTc]

I've had Macbooks in the past with 2 gigs of ram and done far more "multitasking" than I have been on this mini yet I get constant beach balls and looking at Activity Monitor many times with only Mail open, Safari with one tab and iTunes open, not doing anything.. I am down to less than 100mb of usable ram.

Currently looking at the monitor with safari (one tab), mail (idle) and iTunes (idle)

178mb Free
513mb Wired
1028mb Active
339mb Inactive

Showing 1.82GB used.

The obvious solution is to add 2 more gigs, but for the little I use this machine aside from hulu, playing DVD's and such I've never had the beach ball issue as bad on any of my other Mac's with 2 gigs, Macbook, MB Pro 13" and an older iMac.

Something I'm missing here that would cause this to be an issue? or a possible hardware/memory problem? Open to any suggestions.

Pretty normal I would say. I bought my mini a couple of weeks ago and watched it for a few days. Ram was averaging 1.89 daily use. I have since upgraded to 4 gig and it was worth every penny. The system now runs smoother and averages 1.9 to 2.5 gig average use.

 

[bossxii]

Pretty normal I would say. I bought my mini a couple of weeks ago and watched it for a few days. Ram was averaging 1.89 daily use. I have since upgraded to 4 gig and it was worth every penny. The system now runs smoother and averages 1.9 to 2.5 gig average use.

Thanks for the info. I am looking to upgrade soon after running lots of tests between running certain programs and tasks. Bottom line is I need to upgrade, simply too much time waiting for things to free up running the basic set of programs I use. Figured I monitor prices and see if I can catch a 4gig module to make it easier to upgrade later.

Thanks again for sharing how your upgrade helped.

 

[pooryou]

That's silly. I'd rather have too much RAM than too little.

No, it's not silly at all. It's a fact.

We would all rather have too much RAM than too little, that's a non-sequitir.