Why the Spinning BeachBall on Mac Mini?

[afuturestrader]

A few months ago I purchased a Mac mini as my introduction to Mac. It is a nice machine and I really like Leopard.

Every so often (on ocassion, not all the time) I get a spinning beach ball for about 2 to 4 seconds.

What might be the cause? Processor tapped out? Using all Ram? Or is this inherent in operating system?

Thanks

 

[Father Jack]

The Mac Mini is a great little machine although a tad underpowered. The spinning beachball is saying "hold on a moment I'm just doing something"

Don't worry we all see it from time to time ..

 

[hologram]

It could very well be ram. You don't say how much you have, but if there's not enough room in ram to do a task it will write temp files to disk and that might be your beachball.

The more ram you have, the less you should see the ball, but even so, I like to restart my comp every few days to eliminate all of the temp/swap files that have built up. It's not necessary, but it keeps things speedy.

 

[Techguy172]

It's most likely Ram mine would do that and since i upgrade haven't seen it once.