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coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw to Thinkdiff

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Re: White 2011 macbook is super slow

Sure, but I have a Windows 10 system (laptop) with a 1.8GHz single-core celeron with 4 gigs of ram on the 965 chipset with the attendant GMA X3100 graphics and an eight or nine year old spinning disk (4200 or 5400RPM) which is definitelyfailing. And, dual core second gen i5 mini ("2011") with 8 gigs of ram and a newer, faster, non-failing hard disk is slower at everything.

An SSD will make it faster, but by how much?

I would say something's wrong with my mini, but it perks right up and happily runs 3-4 VMs all of which can run applications really quickly and make efficient use of memory if I flip it over to Windows 8/8.1 or Server 2012/2012R2. If the disk was going "bad," (and not merely slow because it's not an SSD) I would have noticed it there, and a replacement or an SSD would already be on the docket for that machine.

What's weirder is that I can't even say every Mac I touch is so slow -- I have two MacBookPros at work, one is a 2.4GHz Core2Duo (GF8600mGT) with 4GB of ram and the other is a 2.2GHz Sandy Bridge i7 (with Radeon something or other) with 8GB of ram and both have spinning hard disks, and neither feels quite as slow as my mini, even though I'm reasonably sure the i7 machine has the same hard disk my mini does, and beyond a certain point there's no good reason for overall CPU performance to be involved with how fast apps can launch, etc.

Nevertheless, I keep a Mac on hand both so I can say I use both, and so I can see if it ever gets better. Alas.
coryw

coryw to TigerLord

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That's an impressive build. I'll admit my most impressive PC is definitely a laptop with a Core2Duo. (One day!)

One possible solution for your Thunderbolt issue is to get one of those Thunderbolt "docks" that has ethernet/USB3/FW800 and a pass-through for your display, so you can connect both of your displays via Tbolt (and get all of those glorious pixels) and also various connections. I've considered one for my mini because I leave it under my desk, and so I can get USB 3.0. (The 2011 model I have only has USB 2.0.)

techguyga
Premium Member
join:2003-12-31
00000
ARRIS BGW210-700

techguyga to TigerLord

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It's essentially the same, but Apple starting integrating the RAM and storage directly onto the system board so you can't upgrade...at least that's how my 2013 rMPB is built. What you order it with is what it stays with.