huge memory use on intel based Mac

[lance]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if it is normal to see in the Activity Monitor that
there is a huge amount of virtual memory use for Entourage and other
Office 2004 for Mac and
that it says it is a "PowerPc" in the 'Type' column, even though I am
running a new iMac with an intel processor?

I have been having problems with another program having huge memory
buildup and freezing and wondering if this is contributing to the
problem?

thanks

Jackson

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if it is normal to see in the Activity Monitor that
there is a huge amount of virtual memory use for Entourage and other
Office 2004 for Mac and
that it says it is a "PowerPc" in the 'Type' column, even though I am
running a new iMac with an intel processor?

Here is the situation with the new MacIntel.
Optimized applications will be fast and use a reasonable ammount of
memory.
Non optimized application have to run in some kind of emulation mode.
These are the PPC apps. They haven't been written to natively run on
Intel chip (as the PPC status suggests).
The emulation mode is called Rosetta. Rosetta emulation is a little
slower than what it could be and it is rather memory-hungry.

What you see is not unexpected unfortunately. You see improvements with
the next version of Office (12, 2007 or 2008 - I don't know what the
name will be) that will be optimized to also run natively on Intel
chips.


Corentin

 

[Jackson]

Thanks Corentin,

It's quite unbelievable to me that Microsoft is somehow always behind
the ball. You would think that with all the geniuses there, they would
be able to do things right, rather than always having to work on fixing
glaringly obvious shortcomings.
Microsoft should offer subsidized RAM cards along with their software
package to make up for their idiocy. Or the government should force
them to put huge warning labels on their software packaging like they
do for cigarettes warning that "this software will suck the life out of
your Mac"!!

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Thanks Corentin,

It's quite unbelievable to me that Microsoft is somehow always behind
the ball. You would think that with all the geniuses there, they would
be able to do things right, rather than always having to work on fixing
glaringly obvious shortcomings.

Well before Apple made the announcement that they wee going to Intel
chips, no one had a clue that they would do that.
Then Appl said "easy: if you use X-Code, it's a matter of clicking a
checkbox (or almost...). If you're not, tough luck.

Well MS was using Metrowerk's CodeWarrior if I remember well.
They had to port all their code to X-Code, which is far from trivial for
applications like Office (ask Adobe.... I'm still waiting for Photoshop
in UB).
Office was created long before X-Code even existed anyway.No big
surprise it would not have been compatible out of the box.

Microsoft should offer subsidized RAM cards along with their software
package to make up for their idiocy. Or the government should force
them to put huge warning labels on their software packaging like they
do for cigarettes warning that "this software will suck the life out of
your Mac"!!

Though I don't always agree with everything MS does (read: Windows Media
Player??? What the $#%*YU@#$%), this shortcoming doesn't appear to be
Microsoft's fault to me.
I don't see what they could have done differently to get Office to run
natively on Intel chips as soon as they were announced,

Porting a little shareware to X-Code is one thing. When it comes with
Office..... much different IMVHO.


Corentin