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Why did base 2011 Mac Mini ship with only 2Gb Ram?

thekev said:
People need to get used to the inflated ram consumption of a fully 64 bit OS. It has to address information in larger chunks. What I have a real issue with is the low end macbook air. It has 2GB of ram that are on a shared memory pool with integrated graphics, and the ram is not upgradeable. This seems completely ridiculous to me, much like OSX with a 64GB hard drive. If I see 64GB I want that to represent the ram rather than the unformatted hard drive capacity:cool:.
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well the pageouts on the macbookair are handled by the ssd so they are not the slowest pageouts.

the pageouts on a base macmini are handle by a 5400 rpm hdd really really slow.



I do agree that the ram on the macbook air along with the 64gb ssd are both two small,but it does not kill speed as badly as the 2gb of ram on the base mac mini does.

As an aside usa prices on a new mac mini are 569 at amazon with a 3 percent discount if you use the right credit card. so that is 552 and 8gb ram is about 43 to 45 if you shop around.

so an 8gb 2011 base mac mini costs about 595 that is a good deal.
 
childoftheko4n said:
Could someone recommend a good 8GB set for the 2011 model? I am going to be purchasing the base model soon. Was looking at

http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Modu...9UKW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319165544&sr=8-1

Based on reviews and price.

Thanks!

(so excited!)
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that ram is the wrong ram. this will work. this has a 10 dollar rebate form so 38 bucks

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-DDR3-...F8ZG/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1319166046&sr=8-7




if you want to try an exotic ram these two have been said to speed the graphics in the base model.


http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Modu...3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1319166291&sr=1-3


http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Modu...2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1319166432&sr=1-2


I have not tested them as I don't game.. since they are shared with the intel 3000 graphics they should be faster then the 1333 type ram.
 
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philipma1957 said:
that ram is the wrong ram. this will work. this has a 10 dollar rebate form so 38 bucks

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-DDR3-...F8ZG/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1319166046&sr=8-7




if you want to try an exotic ram these two have been said to speed the graphics in the base model.


http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Modu...3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1319166291&sr=1-3


http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Modu...2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1319166432&sr=1-2


I have not tested them as I don't game.. since they are shared with the intel 3000 graphics they should be faster then the 1333 type ram.
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Ya I won't be gaming at all so il go with the first one :) I appreciate it. Moving from a 2006 MBP to mini (prefer desktop now that I have iPhone and iPad). So kinda of weird switching, good times with that MBP :)
 
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philipma1957 said:
2gb ram is not fine for lion.
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That's not true... I am running Lion on my 2010 base (2gb RAM) 11 inch MBA and it runs perfectly fine. The only thing that I consider "laggy" is when I wake from sleep it takes 2 seconds to come back on, by that I mean I can move the mouse, etc. But I hear it's like that on any/all the 2011 models as well as it's just how Lion wakes up from sleep.
 
MrXiro said:
That's not true... I am running Lion on my 2010 base (2gb RAM) 11 inch MBA and it runs perfectly fine. The only thing that I consider "laggy" is when I wake from sleep it takes 2 seconds to come back on, by that I mean I can move the mouse, etc. But I hear it's like that on any/all the 2011 models as well as it's just how Lion wakes up from sleep.
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I agree. With the common uses of an Air, I never even would know it only has 2GB if it wasn't for me knowing. ha. The SSD, processor, speed of ram, etc. seem to make up for it pretty well.
 
GGJstudios said:
That's why it's called a "base model". 2GB of RAM is fine for a great number of users. If you need more, buy more.
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Rather than "base model" I prefer a more revealing, accurate moniker such as "model-without-ample-ram-but-with-steaming-turd-hdd" model.
:rolleyes:

Even my ancient PowerMac G5 LC with raid 0 was way faster in file performance than a 2010 Mini with the "base" hdd. Eeeeew. Thank God for upgrades.
 
powerbook911 said:
I agree. With the common uses of an Air, I never even would know it only has 2GB if it wasn't for me knowing. ha. The SSD, processor, speed of ram, etc. seem to make up for it pretty well.
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that is because when your are short ram the cpu grabs ii from the ssd. the ssd is fast and you don't notice the lack of ram.

on a mac mini when you are short ram the cpu grabs it from the 5400 rpm hdd and you go beachballing.
 
philipma1957 said:
well the pageouts on the macbookair are handled by the ssd so they are not the slowest pageouts.

the pageouts on a base macmini are handle by a 5400 rpm hdd really really slow.



I do agree that the ram on the macbook air along with the 64gb ssd are both two small,but it does not kill speed as badly as the 2gb of ram on the base mac mini does.

As an aside usa prices on a new mac mini are 569 at amazon with a 3 percent discount if you use the right credit card. so that is 552 and 8gb ram is about 43 to 45 if you shop around.

so an 8gb 2011 base mac mini costs about 595 that is a good deal.
Click to expand...

I've seen a lot of good deals around. I never buy anything big directly from Apple (always from a 3rd party retailer).

Here's my complaint on the mba. When you walk out with that machine with such a small hard drive and lack of ram, you're stuck with it. These parts are not interchangeable. I think in such a configuration, they should give the machine a bit more breathing room.

Oh and if I bought a mini I'd want 16GB of ram. The current price of 8GB dimms makes it impractical so I'd simply look at a refurb quad i7 imac or something like that even though I don't personally care for AIOs due to some of their other limitations. The sequential writes on the mini server (i7 model) don't seem too bad on paper. I could see it being more problematic with pageouts as they generally involve a lot of little bits of data.
 
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thekev said:
Here's my complaint on the mba. When you walk out with that machine with such a small hard drive and lack of ram, you're stuck with it. These parts are not interchangeable. I think in such a configuration, they should give the machine a bit more breathing room.
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I have to agree with this. The Air seems Apple's best effort yet to make you buy from them, to max out the configuration, the only chance you have to do it.
 
DustinT said:
Raid 0? You realize you've more than doubled her chances of data loss. I sure hope you have some good backups in place.
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Be that as it may, failure rate for a mechanic disk drive is low enough for the increase to be of no consequence.

I've been running a RAID 0 system for 2 years straight and I haven't had any problems.

Stop being overly dramatic because you want to make a point.
 
Adamantoise said:
Be that as it may, failure rate for a mechanic disk drive is low enough for the increase to be of no consequence.

I've been running a RAID 0 system for 2 years straight and I haven't had any problems.

Stop being overly dramatic because you want to make a point.
Click to expand...

I don't see the enormous concern with RAID 0 either (knock on wood). Yes, it is true, since either drive failing will knock everything out, there is a double chance at failure.

However, there is a good chance you could get that one bad drive even if you only had one drive. Doubling the chance of failure when that rate is relatively low is less significant. Furthermore, with good backups, people should be able to survive a failure.

Nevertheless, I would agree that there are some who probably shouldn't use RAID 0.
 
Ive runnin RAID for 6 years and never got a failed HDD. People are so paranoid....specially nowadays when a 1TB external disk solely for backup is around $80, thats 3 times my Mac Mini.

BTW, today when opening around 30 youtube pages at once, I max 4GB, so go for 8GB if you can afford it (who doesnt, assuming you can afford a mac..)
 
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