PowerPoint - sluggish performance

[manley.perkel]

A PP presentation I give every few months has started to act very
sluggish. It has many slides, some with 3 or 4 large pictures on them.

I was running the presentation on an older Mac G4 PowerBook running OS
10.2.3 and it seemed to run just fine. (I can't recall the processor
speed but I am guessing it was about 600 MHz). There was a slight delay
transitioning to a page with 3 or 4 large pictures, but it was almost
not noticeable. Unfortunately, I don't know the PP version on this
machine.

I am now trying to run the same presentation on a new 1.33GHz iBook G4,
running OS 10.3.7. It is awful! I can count to six after requesting
the next page before it actually displays. Effectively, it is useless
for my needs. I can't make this presentation with such a delay. This
machine runs PP version 11.1.0.

Today, I gave this presentation twice. The first time on a Mac G5
running OS 10.3.6. The delay, while still there, was less noticeable -
maybe 1 or 2 seconds, certainly not 4 or 5.

The second time was on a PC - have no idea what model or operating
system. The response on this system was incredibly crisp! Absolutely
no delay whatever. Ask for the next PP slide and, voila, there it was.

Has anyone heard of this problem?

By the way, I feel almost, but not absolutely, certain it is a Mac OS
problem, and not a PowerPoint issue because I have tried the
presentation on a new Dual Processor G5, and an older G4, both runnning
OS 10.3.7. Even with the super fast G5, there is the same,
unreasonable, delay in transitioning from slide to slide.
Thanks
Manley

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

Yes, a few others have posted similar comments. If the presentation
contains nothing secret or private and you're willing to send it to
Microsoft to be dissected, please post it to a URL so it can be downloaded.

Thanks.

-Jim

 

[Sammy]

I'm in the same boat. It's actually really devastating.

I've got a bunch of presentations I'd developed over the last five years
or so on older versions of Office for Mac, or MS Office for various
iterations of Windows. Until mid-last year I was running all of them
happily on my 800 MHz iBook G3. Then I got an iBook G4, 1.2 GHz model,
and they really worked smoothly in Office X.

Then I bought Office for Mac 2004, impressed by Dave Pogue's review and
excited about the option of being able to read my notes on my laptop
screen while sending just the slide to the audience's screen.

As it turns out, I can't run any of my old Powerpoint talks on the new
Powerpoint. Since I'd deleted Office X, and can't find the disc, I'm
completely screwed. Now I am forced to run around with my lectures on
CD-ROMs and flashdrives, dependent upon other people's computers for
projection and for editing.

It's absolutely disastrous - not only did I waste my money on the
product (it's really only Powerpoint and basic Word I use), I've cut
down on my productivity. And I'm forced to work on the crappy Windows PC
at work.

I'm particularly bitter tonight, because I had to mess around all day to
present a simple presentation to a large group. Then I came home and
opened up my old iBook running the old Office X, and the same
presentation played beautifully.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

If nothing else, there's a valuable lesson buried in there. Several. Hang
onto your CDs like your computer depended on it (it does). And don't delete
the old version of anything until you've tested the new version and found that
it meets or exceeds expectations.



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
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