Recommendation for fast Mac for databases or way to make Mac faster?

I've currently got a Mac mini 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1 GB RAM running OS 10.6.8. I'm on a quest to either make my current Mac faster or find the ideal mac for databases. I upgraded recently from 10.5.8 to 10.6.8 in the hopes of making my computer more stable and faster, but things are running slower. No wonder, Activity Monitor hardly shows any green memory. Apple doesn't seem to sell memory for this Mac anymore. So I'm wondering whether it's time to just get a new Mac.
What Mac would you recommend for someone not using videos, music, images on a regular basis? Would you consider any of them to be overkill for mostly running database programs? Or would any particular one be insufficient?
Thanks!

Well, almost correct. This computer is used primarily for work, which typically involves FMP or Excel, a browser, less frequently page layout software, Acrobat, emulators of older Mac OSs, and very rarely videos, graphics or audio files. The original problem that led to this post was with a large Excel file that started going haywire. Troubleshooting that led me to repair permissions, repair disk (nothing wrong), reset all sorts of prefs, and eventually install 10.6. After that install, Excel became extremely slow, and other apps also took much longer to open. So I cleaned up Font Book, got rid of unnecessary widgets, emptied caches, and otherwise tried to streamline things. The only startup item I have is for the printer. The other day I realized that Firefox is guzzling any memory that looks free to it, even if I don't have 50 tabs open. Followed steps recommended by Mozilla to solve that, but it seems to guzzle even more now (over 450 MB with 2 tabs open). I don't have Cocktail or Onyx, but maybe that would be the place to look next. I'll try resetting PRAM & SMP next.
I do want to start backing up the files I'm currently working on on an hourly/weekly basis, if not the whole HD. I've been lazy about that. Since that will involve buying an external HD, I've been putting it off to see whether it's worth it to stick with this computer (and get an HD with Firewire 400) or wait & get an HD with Thunderbolt. I dropped in at the Apple store yesterday to look at the new Macs, and they seem to be running fine without any memory guzzlers (even on those with just 2 GB), though the app startup time was a bit slow.
OWC looks great; I'd just have to either find a Swiss equivalent or wait till my next trip back to the U.S., which isn't around the corner.

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So, I'm starting college in the fall as a computer science major. I have decided to choose a Macbook Pro with Retina Display as my weapon of choice. The only remaining questions I have before I order pertain specifically to GHz and Flash Memory. I saw that for about $250, you could upgrade your processor from 2.7 GHz to 2.8 GHz, and for $400 extra you could upgrade your flash memory. To be honest, and this is an embarrassing confession for a CS student to make, but I really have no clue what either of those things do to the computer, and what impact they have. Before I ask you what you'd recommend, let me give a little more information.
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TJNickerson wrote:
So, I guess my ultimate question is, is the extra $250 or $400 really worth it? Would I be able to get by without spending all the extra cash?
The CPU upgrade is only worth it for applications where the CPU is specifically the bottleneck. These days, not many are. The amount of RAM, the GPU, and the speed of storage often play into overall application speed.
You might want to check with upperclassmen in your program, though, because it is possible that some programming environments might benefit from it when compiling or something.
But for most people, $250 for another 0.1 GHz is a bad deal. On the 15-inch it is paying 9% more to boost CPU by just 4%.
If the storage starts at 512MB, that is a lot of space for most people. The $400 is for SSD storage which is expensive (compared to traditional spinning hard disks) so you'd better need it. The two questions to ask yourself are, do you need to carry everything around all the time, or can you keep some on an external drive? Because $400 would buy you a 4TB external drive with money left over. The second question is does that storage need to be SSD fast? If yes, then maybe the upgrade is good. If no, then you'd paying a lot more for much faster storage than you need.
TJNickerson wrote:
Oh, and as for screen resolution, I was thinking 15 inch, due to the fact that this will most likely be my primary computer at college. Is that a good call as well?
15 inch is a screen size, not a screen resolution. One way to think about it is, do you expect to be using one screen-filling window at a time, or seeing lots of app windows at a time? The 13-inch is a better size for single window work, but the 15-inch is better for spreading out your workspace with multiple windows and panels.

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Hi,
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Here are the specs:
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- Windows 2008 R2 (64-bit )
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johnpau2013 wrote:
I heard that RAID 5 is not recommended for Oracle database.
Is it true ?Kind off... as Oracle (as per the RAC Starter Kits for example) explicitly recommends SAME - as in Stripe And Mirror Everything.
This is a combination of RAID1 and RAID0.
However, you will also get whitepapers from storage vendors like EMC in partnership with Oracle, that explains how to configure and use RAID5 storage and how effective this is. And as some will tell you, RAID5 can work just fine with Oracle... and some others will grimace and tell you how bad an idea that is from personal experiences.
In a nutshell - RAID5 requires a parity calculation on each write. That is a very expensive overhead if that calculation impacts the fwrite() (file write) command of a process writing data to disk. It significantly slows down the write operation.
However, if that parity calculation is done asynchronously and does not effect the elapsed time for a fwrite(), then a fwrite() to RAID5 is as fast or as slow as it would be to RAID10 for example.
Unsure how many modern storage system supports off-loading the parity calculation and not impacting the write I/O call. This can be done using ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), specialised s/w on the storage server, etc.
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In OS X 10.7.5 or later, downloaded applications and Installer packages that have not been digitally signed by a developer registered with Apple are blocked from loading by default. The block can be overridden, but think carefully before you do so.
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5. Don't fill up your boot volume. A common mistake is adding more and more large files to your home folder until you start to get warnings that you're out of space, which may be followed in short order by a boot failure. This is more prone to happen on the newer Macs that come with an internal SSD instead of the traditional hard drive. The drive can be very nearly full before you become aware of the problem.
While it's not true that you should or must keep any particular percentage of space free, you should monitor your storage use and make sure you're not in immediate danger of using it up. According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of free space on the startup volume for normal operation.
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6. Relax, don’t do it. Besides the above, no routine maintenance is necessary or beneficial for the vast majority of users; specifically not “cleaning caches,” “zapping the PRAM,” "resetting the SMC," “rebuilding the directory,” "defragmenting the drive," “running periodic scripts,” “dumping logs,” "deleting temp files," “scanning for viruses,” "purging memory," "checking for bad blocks," "testing the hardware," or “repairing permissions.” Such measures are either completely pointless or are useful only for solving problems, not for prevention.
Let go of the Windows mentality that every computer needs regular downtime maintenance such as "defragging" and "registry cleaning." Those concepts do not apply to the Mac platform. The machine should not be a focus of your attention. You shouldn't have to think about it at all. It should be a transparent, almost unnoticeable tool by means of which you communicate, work, and play. If you want a computer that depends on you to keep going, use a PC.
The very height of futility is running an expensive third-party application called “Disk Warrior” when nothing is wrong, or even when something is wrong and you have backups, which you must have. Disk Warrior is a data-salvage tool, not a maintenance tool, and you will never need it if your backups are adequate. Don’t waste money on it or anything like it.

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