Thinking about buying a 2011 Mac Mini, but have some questions

By Mary Ward, 14 July, 2016

Forum
Apple Hardware and Compatible Accessories

Hello. I have the chance to buy a used Mac Mini 2011 with a decent sized SSD hard drive and 16 GB of RAM. It belongs to an engineer who just has too many of them. I am writing this here becdause I am thinking about running Bootcamp and running Windows with JAWS, which I already own. I'm concerned about the 16 GB limit on these machines. But they are more configurable than the newer models, which have many parts soldered in. Any advice? Thanks.

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Comments

By Alyssa on Saturday, July 23, 2016 - 20:56

Hi,
I think this Mac would serve your needs just fine. Many computers running JAWS only have 8 gigs of Ram and can run it fine. I don't think the Mac programing itself will take too much of that Ram as most people successfully use a Mac with only 4 to 8 gigs. I hope this answers some of your questions.

By david s on Saturday, July 23, 2016 - 20:56

Hello,

I agree with the above post. Since you're running windows in a bootcamp enviroment vs. virtual machine over the OSX, 16GB is more than enough RAM. Just make sure the SSD is large enough to install both OS and the apps you plan to use.

HTH and Good luck.

By Mary Ward on Saturday, July 23, 2016 - 20:56

Thank you guys for the comments. I decided to do it and to do a partition of 200 for the Mac and 300 for Windows, which always takes up more resources. Freedom Scientific said that JAWS itself needs only 4 or even 2 GB of RAM and that the problems come from other Windows programs. An optimistic assessment to be sure. But I'm going to do it and get rid of all t his clutter on my desk!