Help me deslugify my Mac mini

[Black]

silvarios wrote:
[quote=modelamac]
[quote=sekker]
putty knife cracking - not a big deal.

I agree. I have the 2009 mini 2.0 and just 2 days ago had to replace one of the 4GB RAM sticks under warranty. It takes about 30 minutes max. start to finish.
It's like bizarro world where down is up and up is down. RAM upgrades should take at most five minutes. Only Apple could convince people thirty minutes and almost complete disassembly is reasonable. Pop the shell, flip out or remove the upper chassis (remember to disconnect a couple delicate wires first). RAM's on the bottom. While not impossible, it is disconcerting (cracking cases will never sound okay) and much more annoying than needed.
I cracked my mini as soon as I got it and I absolutely did not like the feeling that I'd mucked it up with the putty knife (no matter how careful you are you're going to leave some sort of mark.)
Also recall some difficulty getting screws back in their corresponding holes (I swapped hard drive too), being afraid putting the case back on would knock antenna loose, etc. At least the successive generation has improved that process.

[RAMd®d]

3G of swapfiles seems like a lot.

I wish there were a simple and free way of clearing out swap files other than restarting.

[decay]

looked up Free Memory, found a reference to this non-App store utility called Purge

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/39777/purge

[guitarist]

silvarios wrote:
[quote=modelamac]
[quote=sekker]
putty knife cracking - not a big deal.

I agree. I have the 2009 mini 2.0 and just 2 days ago had to replace one of the 4GB RAM sticks under warranty. It takes about 30 minutes max. start to finish.
It's like bizarro world where down is up and up is down. RAM upgrades should take at most five minutes. Only Apple could convince people thirty minutes and almost complete disassembly is reasonable...
Apple's not in the business of convincing anyone of anything of the sort. It's unfortunate they didn't develop it earlier, but we can at least say that customers wishing to upgrade RAM won. RAM access in Minis took a surprising leap forward in last few hardware redesigns. Apple improved the Mini to not only make it easy, but they made it drop-dead easy.

[dmcdayton]

I have 8GB of OWC RAM and a 120GB OWC Extreme SSD arriving tomorrow, Merry Christmas to my Early 2009 Mac Mini. AppleCare just replaced the P.O.S Optiarc Super Drive with a Pioneer, the change was so drastic, I've decided to keep the Mini and speed it up. Love the AppleCare, no questions asked.

Does anyone know of any "RAM Optimizations" that need to be done or is Lion full-auto for handling 8GB? (My firmware and patch level for Lion is up-to-date, etc).

Are there any applications (iTunes ripping for instance) that can be configured to write temporary files to RAM instead of disc? I'd like to extract CDs, covert to Apple Lossless and write only once to my attached Firewire external drive. (I read another post where Eye TV will store the temp file in RAM).

Other tips/tricks?