Annoying stalled scrolling

[mwarner]

This problem may be due to my system, but it drives me nuts so
hopefully others have encountered it and know of solutions. Here is my
configuration: PowerBook (Ti 500 G4) running 10.3.9 with 1MB of RAM
connected to a 19" LCD display. I'm using a Logitech mouse and
whenever I scroll with the scroll wheel in a Word doc (office 2004,
11.2) the first few pages will scroll fine, but then as I continue to
roll the scroll wheel, the pages stop moving and sit still until I then
click anywhere on the screen in Word and then the pages suddenly scroll
again and eventually stop. I realize that my old PowerBook is quite
anemic in the video RAM department and wonder if this is why. If anyone
out there is reading this and running a similar configuration with a
newer PB can you tell me if you are experiencing similar behavior?

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

I "hope" you mean "1 GB" of RAM.

If so, you are now experiencing the new scrolling behaviour of Word post SP
2.

The short answer is: "That's the way it is" and it is a change from the
previous behaviour.

Word is a collection of tasks and priorities. Some priorities got tweaked
in SP2 to improve the responsiveness of the product. Scrolling is one of
the tasks that lost out in that option.

You have discovered the "cure" -- *click the mouse*.

The pause is caused by Word waiting for the system to bring more data from
the disk. The mouse generates a high-priority interrupt that forces the
system to talk to Word. After it answers the mouse click (to do
'nothing'...) Word sucks more data off the disk.

Cheers

This problem may be due to my system, but it drives me nuts so
hopefully others have encountered it and know of solutions. Here is my
configuration: PowerBook (Ti 500 G4) running 10.3.9 with 1MB of RAM
connected to a 19" LCD display. I'm using a Logitech mouse and
whenever I scroll with the scroll wheel in a Word doc (office 2004,
11.2) the first few pages will scroll fine, but then as I continue to
roll the scroll wheel, the pages stop moving and sit still until I then
click anywhere on the screen in Word and then the pages suddenly scroll
again and eventually stop. I realize that my old PowerBook is quite
anemic in the video RAM department and wonder if this is why. If anyone
out there is reading this and running a similar configuration with a
newer PB can you tell me if you are experiencing similar behavior?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[mwarner]

Yes, I did mean 1 GB of RAM and that is very sad news indeed to hear
that Word is hamstrung in such a fashion. This is simply pathetic to
loose real-time scrolling in any peice of software developed in this
day and age. Does anyone know where one can send feed back to the
office Mac development team to request that this is repaired? I'm
really shocked that this is "the way it is," classic Microsoft..one
step forward, two steps back.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Does anyone know where one can send feed back to the
office Mac development team to request that this is repaired?

This is the best place - MacBU reads these groups.

FWIW, MacBU certainly knows about the problem, and has it on their list.

Like most software companies, of course, they won't announce if/when it
will be fixed.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello-

As JE points out the problem may never be addressed by MS, but just in
case they hadn't occured to you here are a couple of suggestions that
may help ease the pain in the meantime;

1- Make sure your HD has a much free space as you can. If you have
DiskWarrior or similar, run it to consolidate the free space once you
dispose of anything you don't need active on the drive,

2- If feasible, add another 256-512 MB of RAM,

3- Try to avoid running any other apps or 'background' utilities, at
least when working with longer docs,

4- If you're not familiar with manually executing the OS X/Unix cron
routines, get a copy of OnyX (http://www.titanium.free.fr/) or
comparable in order to be able to run the utilities periodically. (They
run automatically by OS X on a daily, weekly & monthly basis, but in
the middle of the night when most laptops are not running.)

Good Luck |:>)