Macbook 12" performance for Devonthink

DEVONthink Tips
1

I’m looking at buying the smallest laptop I can find for travel. My job is resulting is a significant increase in cross country travel.

My choice is a Macbook 12inch with an i7 processor, 16 gb memory and 256 gb ssd. This computer will only be used for DevonThink and PowerPoint presentations.

My question is, will this computer provide adequate performance for DevonThink with a database of about 10 gb?

I love the size of the little Macbook 12" but I’m afraid of the performance of the mobile Intel processor??? Having to face Mac Beachballs on every inquiry to DT would be unacceptable.

Thanks in advance
Larry

2

The performance has little to do with the processor (and the i7 wouldn’t be a slouch anyways).
Application stalls are more related to availabe RAM.

3

I’m using DTPO on a 2018 MacBook Air i5 1.6GHz with 8GB memory and it’s quick.

I normally have lots of apps open at any one time and all seems to be fine.

I came from a 2014 MBA with only 4GB and that was fine too unless I went mad with graphics and/or video.

Hope that helps

4

It is not comparable, but my MacBook Pro TouchBar 2017 has 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD disk and DT reach peaks of 50GB of used RAM without any sense of decrease performance…

However, same configuration in my iMac 2017 with 24GB of RAM and 2TB Fusion Drive disk… well, performance is incredibly bad with a lot of frezees when DT stats using more than 20GB or RAM… and the guilty is the mechanical disk and the macOS memmory swapping.

What I wonoder is how an iOS device can handle the same amount of data (slow but not frezees) and not a MAC. I assume they aren’t using any partial database load or “search in disk” algorithms, that are here since, well, 1975?