[jyl]

As mentioned before, I switched over the home desktop computer from a G5 iMac to a new Mac mini w/ dual monitors. I bought the base Mac mini and it was kind of slow, with tons of disk caching, due to only 1GB DRAM (!).

I just upgraded the DRAM to 8GB, and the mini is much faster.

Here's the question - I have a 60GB SSD and could put that in the mini, moving the libraries to a USB external HDD (photos, music, etc).

Seems to me, I'd gain speed in launching/running apps (going from internal HDD to internal SSD), but I might lose speed in accessing libraries (going from internal drive to external USB).

Think the SSD is worth doing?

Usage is the basic web, iPhoto, iTunes, son's games, Office, Mail/Contacts - problem is, the family doesn't know how to close an app once done, so I'll come to the mini and find like 15 applications all open at once.

On the daughter's netbook, switching the HDD to a SSD added a ton of speed (maybe I should call it "responsiveness"), but that machine has only 2GB DRAM.

I could stick the SSD in the wife's MacBook instead.