Most reviews of Tiger were conducted on fairly new and fast Macs. This article, however, focuses on running it on a low-end Mac. And, to the reviewer's surprise, it runs ok.
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Member since:2005-07-06
I upgraded my Imac flat panel 800mhz from 256mb and OS 10.1 to 768mb and Tiger and let me tell you it was like a hardware upgrade
Well, it _was_ a hardware upgrade, right? If you really wanna know how much the improvemente was due to Tiger, you should have tried with the previous amount of RAM.
I agree with the guy above too, 1 GB of RAM sounds insane for an "introductory" computer. 512MB maybe, but 1Gb? No way.
Member since:2005-07-07
512 MB for an introductory computer was considered insane some time ago. Let's face it, as technology progresses, the minimum requirements always go up.
The Mac Mini will run fine with 512 MB of RAM. However, due to the way OS X uses RAM as a disk cache (see all the inactive, used memory), getting more RAM is always a good thing since the OS can use it to speed up the user experience.
Member since:2005-07-10
I agree with the guy above too, 1 GB of RAM sounds insane for an "introductory" computer. 512MB maybe, but 1Gb? No way.
Well, 1 GB RAM isn't necessary, but the way OSX works makes you want it anyway. It's different from Windows where you might not experience any speed gains when going above 768 MB - 1 GB RAM.
OSX caches everything so there will be differences between 512 MB RAM and 1 GB RAM, but also with 1 GB, 2 GB or 4 GB. It'll simply keep speeding up. It's even more dramatic if the harddisk is slow, like the 5400 RPM 2.5" one in the Mini.
There are pro and con arguments on getting that much RAM in it, but I noticed my work pattern changed a lot:
- I hardly ever reboot
- I can run 15-20 programs without experiencing swapping
- If it's asleep, it wakes faster than my CRT display does.
- The machine feels like it's just "there". No need to wait for it booting, restarting, swapping, etc.
I like working that way and I try to use my Windows box that way. It mostly works, except for the fun parts where it takes 15 minutes to wake from hibernation and it runs sour after about 8-10 days. The Mac doesn't.
Member since:
I upgraded my Imac flat panel 800mhz from 256mb and OS 10.1 to 768mb and Tiger and let me tell you it was like a hardware upgrade. I had some misgivings about Tiger and Dashboard and everything I'd read, but damn it was worth the upgrade.