Each case here could be different. While overtaxing a machine (server or not) can always be a cause for poor performance, it is not always memory and not always CPU. It even can be disk speed if you are using a lot of disk based data like MapInfo Native tables.
Let's get some information clear. For Tony, it makes sense that Spectrum is the memory "hog" rather than Analyst although with just Spatial it should not be too big. Spectrum itself in version 12.x has 3 Java processes that are always there. If the only module you have is Spatial (for Analyst) there should be 4. With tools we can see what each process is taking up in memory and CPU and even disk I/o. However, if you are using the same version of Spectrum and Analyst and only upgraded MapInfo Pro, there are only 2 possibilities that I can see.
1) You were near the bad threshold before and v17 is using enough more memory to push it over the limit of usability.
2) Something in the Pro install/environment is using a lot of .. (memory/cpu/...). Which we would want to figure out because adding memory may not do it or just postpone.
Now if other things have changed such as the version of Spectrum and/or Analyst we would have to compare their usage.
As a test, I went to one of my VM where I have spectrum with Spatial maps, routing and geocoding and Analyst on the same VM. The VM has 16 gig of RAM and the vm is using about 25 gig. So virtual memory management is in place and things are not real speedy.
The memory is mostly using by my routing databases (the US has a lot of roads so is 4 gig ) and Geocoding and Spectrum itself. Analyst seems to have 1.5 gig and Pro 16 about 800Meg. The workspace has 6 maps, 3 browsers and about 12 tables overall, a few of which are decently large. Closing v16 only show about the 800 released and starting up v17 with the same workspace was very similar in memory and I am able to pan and zoom and interact with the tool and layer control. So no real difference.
The workspace you sent did not seem to have anything all that interesting other than all the tables seem to be on a remote file share. I assume those are all MapInfo native tab files. There are a few themes in there that recalculate can take some time but I see no evidence of that. Are the columns used in the themes indexed? If the tab files are readonly to you, Pro could be forced to use temporary indices. But that would all be the same for 16 and 17.
So still a bit of a mystery.
The usage tracking turned on might be worth checking and turning off and see if that matters. Its on the options page under Application settings. Worth a try. Tools like Fiddler can be used with Windows applications to see if network, http activity is being too chatty. But easier to just turn it off and see if that changes anything.
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