2014 Mini, low usage, why spinning beachball?

Question

I purchased a 2014 Mini for my wife as a email and internet computer. She does very little else with it, and it probably doesn't get 30 minutes of use a day. I am always surprised to have her complain about having the spinning beachball at the strangest times like simple browsing or Apple Mail. Its a basic config, but it seems to me that the basic hardware shouldn't be pressed very hard by the basic built in applications.
I did not upgrade to Yosemite because I thought the problem could get worse.
My question is: Is this common for a previous version Mini? If so why do people buy them if they lack the resources to perform basic functions. How can I tell what is causing the spinning beachball? Or better yet how can I eliminate it.
Thanks in advance,
Mark

Answer 1

When you see the beachball cursor, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.  
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.
Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.
Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.