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mdelrossi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 22, 2005
124
72
Hello all,
I have an old late 2009 Mac mini with an ssd, 2 gb ram, and Newer headless Mac adapter.
I was wondering if upping the ram to 4 or 8 gb would do anything to help the lag I see in using screen sharing.
Thanks
mdr
 
2GB is very little RAM for a computer in 2015. I recommend upgrading to 8GB if you can. It will drastically help you for your purposes with this little computer. 8GB RAM kit's aren't very expensive.
 
I also have a late 2009 Mini with HDD (7200 rpm), 8GB RAM attached to a real monitor running Snow Leopard. The 2009 Mini uses wifi. When screen sharing to the 2009 from my 2012 Mini (El Capitan), the response is good. I haven't done much screen sharing to the 2009 Mini but I would think this would be typical. I noticed that Screen Sharing doesn't take much memory at all so a RAM upgrade won't necessarily help if Screen Sharing is the culprit in your case. But as g33k points out, a RAM upgrade would help the other applications you're running and boost the overall system responsiveness.
 
I also have a late 2009 Mini with HDD (7200 rpm), 8GB RAM attached to a real monitor running Snow Leopard. The 2009 Mini uses wifi. When screen sharing to the 2009 from my 2012 Mini (El Capitan), the response is good. I haven't done much screen sharing to the 2009 Mini but I would think this would be typical. I noticed that Screen Sharing doesn't take much memory at all so a RAM upgrade won't necessarily help if Screen Sharing is the culprit in your case. But as g33k points out, a RAM upgrade would help the other applications you're running and boost the overall system responsiveness.
yes op needs to upgrade .... My 2009 works great with eight gb
 
I have several 2009 minis
I think to get 8gb support you need to flash firmware to act as Mac mini server.

With 2gb your machine is using HS for caching constantly

You will see difference in 4gb even.
Go to fixit for a guide. Install should take you about 15-20 min
 
The early 2009 Mini requires the EFI Firmware Update 1.2 to use 8GB. The late 2009 Mini (which the OP says he has) does not.

In any case, if you've kept current with the updates, it would have been applied years ago (whether the Mini was a server model or not).
 
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