Hi Ben:
I'm with Bob on this one.
Mac OS is actually BSD Unix under the skin. BSD Unix was really designed
for "servers", not desktop computers, and as such, it allocates CPU time in
fairly large slices. This is great for a server, because anything a server
wants to do is usually a fairly large job.
It's not so good for a desktop computer. They spend a lot of time recording
"one" key-press. That takes only a nanosecond. They sit idle for the rest
of the allocated time-slice, until the OS takes back control.
Apple has been steadily perfecting the tuning of Mac OS since they first
changed to Unix. Tuning a Unix system is a complex interaction of swings
and roundabouts. It's now a lot better than it *was*. If you are used to
Windows, you will know that Windows is very slick in this regard. That's
because Windows hands out tiny time-slices, and it cheats like hell.
Windows always "seems" very responsive. But if you measure the number of
bytes that have been processed by the end of the day, the result is not a
lot different to OS X. If you listen to either company on the subject, the
amount of BS on this topic would dwarf War and Peace...
With either operating system, there will be pauses while the system goes
away to do something else. On Unix, those pauses are long enough to be
noticeable to the user.
Word, of course, is not a "perfect" design. Few applications are. Word is
both old, and originally designed for a different operating system. So it's
not as slick as some applications: particularly not as slick as the Apple
applications that were 'specially designed for OS X.
Word will pause and jerk when it's working hard. This doesn't normally
worry anyone unless the system is running slow. Which it will be, if it
doesn't have enough memory. If you really are running an original iMac with
512 MB of memory, there's your problem. You need at least 1 GB of memory to
make Microsoft Office go properly.
However, if you are running on an Intel Mac, you are running Microsoft
Office (and everything else that was made before the Intel Macs came out)
through Rosetta. Rosetta is a translator that translates software from
PowerPC to Intel. Since this involves at a minimum flipping every
instruction end-for-end, you can imagine that Rosetta is a fairly busy
little subsystem, and the performance they get out of it is astonishing.
But it needs plenty of memory itself.
Since you will be running Office in Rosetta for a few months yet, I suggest
that you lift the memory in your machine to 2GB. Might as well fill it
right up while you have the lid off, and 2GB is all that an iMac will
handle. That will give Rosetta room to breath, and performance will improve
noticeably.
You will get a substantial performance boost when running large complex
applications such as Word on large complex documents using large complex
add-ins such as EndNote. You may gain enough performance that you won't be
able to even notice the jerks and pauses.
I suspect a lot of your problem is caused waiting for the system to move
parts of software from memory out to disk to make room for other parts.
This is a problem named "paging". It's normal for a system to page chunks
of an application out to virtual memory: but on a desktop machine you
certainly wouldn't want it to be doing so often, because you get a pause of
some second or so each time.
Other hints that may help:
1) When you are finished with an application on a Mac, hit Command + q
instead of the red dot. The red dot does not exit the application like the
red X does in Windows. It minimises the application but leaves it running.
This is great on a system with plenty of memory: the application restarts
instantly when you need it again. But when you're running out of memory,
that minimised application is occupying memory that cannot be used for
useful work!
2) If you get sick of waiting for a pause, move or click the mouse! The
mouse generates a highest-priority interrupt to the System. After the
system answers that call and discovers there was noting else to do, it will
then allocate the next CPU time slice to the application at the top of the
wait queue. All things being equal, that will be the foreground application
(the one you're working in...) which is Word. So moving the mouse can break
the pauses for you
3) If you intend to make your living working on large, complex documents
(over 250 pages...) a Power Mac is a better bet than an iMac. A Power Mac
with plenty of memory (say, 4GB...) will be snappy editing the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. All of it...
Hope this helps
This thread is a little old, but the most recent one I could find and
right on the money for the problems I am having. I don't think the
issue has anything to do with Endnote itself. I have uninstalled it and
removed its code from the MS Office>Office>Startup>Word folder, and
this did not help the problem (I have also tried with fresh installs of
the Word program, incidentally).
Also, there are several YEARS of threads on this problem (you would
think they would have looked into this more thoroughly at the MS Mac
unit). It is a huge issue for people who need to use MS Word for
productivity, especially when they are typing in long documents. Some
people have just been stymied all together, others have attributed it
to wireless mice, and others like us have this problem when using
Endnote. But again, removing Endnote does not solve the scroll problem
(and certainly adds another problem of losing a useful piece of
software). However, the problem might have something to do with the
citations themselves, AFTER they have been formatted with CWYW (but not
necessarily affected by the mere fact that there is a add in).
This is really just a theory. I notice the font Endnote uses to insert
citations causes compatibility problems (Times New Roman PSMT instead
of just Times New Roman). I tried using the Font Substitutions
function, which did not work, and I also tried using a completely
different font for the document (Arial). This time Endnote formatted
correcty without any compatibility problems, but it still did not fix
the problem. But I am not sure if I have thoroughly tested this theory,
or even described it well. I seek suggestions on how to further look
into this issue.
Ben M
New to Macs (and generally happy until MS Word), Intel (2) imac. Way
too much to do to be debugging word processers!
Daiya said:
Hi Ian,
There are two ways of using CWYW.
One, loading the add-in which adds an EndNote toolbar or menu to your Word
interface, so that you can, for instance, click Insert Reference right from
Word.
Two, the Instant Formatting option which causes the fields to reformat right
as you enter them.
I suspect that the second option is the one you turned off, but that you
have loaded the add-in, since few people use EndNote without it. If so,
hold down shift while launching Word--this will prevent any add-ins from
loading, and if the problem does not occur, it suggests the cause was the
add-in.
Hi John
I don't use CWYW as it was too slow on my old Powerbook. So that is not
the problem. Any other ideas. Does Thomson (ie Endnote manufacturer)
know about this? They were my next port-of-call.
Thanks
Ian
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:
Kill Cite While You Write and see if that fixes it...
On 14/11/06 9:26 PM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "Ian van Driel"
About a year ago and before there were a number of posting on uneven
scrolling in Word 2004. Scrolling freezes but will restart with a mouse
click. I saw one report that it may be a problem with Word and Endnote.
That seems to be the case for me ie I only get problems when I have a
Word doc with Endnote citations in it. Anyone confirm this? Or even
know of a solution.
My details
Macbook Pro 2.33 2 Gb Ram
Word 2004
Endnote 9
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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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
