Previous version for OS X?

[Steve Emerson]

Word 11.1 is no doubt a very powerful program -- I've found it good at
putting together HTML Web pages, for instance.

But it is such a monster, such a huge beast. On my iMac G4 running OS
10.3.8, to fully boot it takes a minimum of 50 seconds, during which of
course nothing else can be done at the machine. In a test I just made,
without a tremendous number of other apps open (Firefox, Mac mail, MT
Newswatcher, and Appleworks) -- it took 85 seconds.

What was the nature of the preceding Word version for OS X? I don't even
know what it was called; not having gone to OS X until earlier this
year. Should I try it?

Second question -- my RAM is finite, I've got 384 MB. Would Word 11.1
load faster if I had more (I realize I should have more anyway, but that
would be a big goad)?

Many thanks,
Steve

 

[Kurt]

Word 11.1 is no doubt a very powerful program -- I've found it good at
putting together HTML Web pages, for instance.

But it is such a monster, such a huge beast. On my iMac G4 running OS
10.3.8, to fully boot it takes a minimum of 50 seconds, during which of
course nothing else can be done at the machine. In a test I just made,
without a tremendous number of other apps open (Firefox, Mac mail, MT
Newswatcher, and Appleworks) -- it took 85 seconds.

What was the nature of the preceding Word version for OS X? I don't even
know what it was called; not having gone to OS X until earlier this
year. Should I try it?

Second question -- my RAM is finite, I've got 384 MB. Would Word 11.1
load faster if I had more (I realize I should have more anyway, but that
would be a big goad)?

Many thanks,
Steve

If it's any consolation, the one that they made for OSX, (in Office X-
[Word 10?]) was just as painfully slow and bloated. I didn't notice much
difference when I upgraded - maybe a tad slower.
I have 768MB RAM.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

384MB is underpowered--the magazine Macworld says it takes 512MB just to
enjoy OS X, and Word is definitely a hungry beast that demands a lot of RAM.
However, something else may also be wrong--even when I had 512MB of RAM I'm
pretty sure it didn't take 50 secs to boot Word. (Now, with 2GB it takes
about 4 seconds, and while I feel my computer is much snappier in general, I
think I would have specifically noted a 10fold decrease in Word launch
time).

In addition, OS X ought to let you do other things while a program is
booting--I do it all the time. That you can't might also be a symptom of
too little memory.

How many fonts do you have, roughly?

Do you have many third-party plug-ins?

Can you create a new user account and see how long it takes to launch there?

PS. Kurt, what is your launch time with 768MB? That might help sort out
what the regular parameters are.

PPS. Actually, Word makes horrible HTML, says all web developers/designers.

 

[Steve Emerson]

Thanks to you both for the answers.

384MB is underpowered--the magazine Macworld says it takes 512MB just to
enjoy OS X, and Word is definitely a hungry beast that demands a lot of RAM.
However, something else may also be wrong--even when I had 512MB of RAM I'm
pretty sure it didn't take 50 secs to boot Word. (Now, with 2GB it takes
about 4 seconds, and while I feel my computer is much snappier in general, I
think I would have specifically noted a 10fold decrease in Word launch
time).

Just now I quit from Firefox, which is also a hungry beast, and booted
Word -- got a window in just over 20 seconds. This can be misleading
though, it's another 5-10 seconds before one can viably type into the
window. Then shortly it slows again to let you know "Word is connecting
to the printer..."

In addition, OS X ought to let you do other things while a program is
booting--I do it all the time. That you can't might also be a symptom of
too little memory.

Ah, that makes sense.

How many fonts do you have, roughly?

Roughly? A lot. But then I always have. I went through a good bit of
rigamarole to get them into places where Word would like them, when I
went to Office 2004. That actually made for some improvements.

Do you have many third-party plug-ins?

For Word, no.

Can you create a new user account and see how long it takes to launch there?

Oy. Do you think I should?

PS. Kurt, what is your launch time with 768MB? That might help sort out
what the regular parameters are.

Yeah, that'd be interesting.

PPS. Actually, Word makes horrible HTML, says all web developers/designers.

OK, noted. Trying to make a page in Apple Works, I couldn't even produce
a background. Netscape Composer didn't act very well running in Classic.
So Word looked pretty good at that point...

I'll work on adding RAM.

Thanks again,
Steve

 

[Elliott Roper]

Thanks to you both for the answers.



Just now I quit from Firefox, which is also a hungry beast, and booted
Word -- got a window in just over 20 seconds. This can be misleading
though, it's another 5-10 seconds before one can viably type into the
window. Then shortly it slows again to let you know "Word is connecting
to the printer..."

That's a good sign that Daiya is right. When a program starting needs
more memory than there is available in the machine, it first copies
some other program's stuff out of memory to disk. This is very time
consuming. You are seeing faster startup of Word when nothing else is
running and needing to be swapped out.

Also look carefully at the splash screen as Word starts. It reports
what it is up to when it is taking forever to get going. If it is
spending a lot of time "optimising fonts" then there are some tricks
for improving that. Look on the MVP website, or Google this group for
it. Or ask here again.

Another good trick for making sure your system performs well is to keep
your system disk less than 80% full. Always have at least 2 GB free.
Firstly so that your swap space can grow. Secondly so the system has
enough room to tidy the disk up as it goes. If the disk is really full,
new and old files will be scattered all over the place in tiny
fragments. That means the disk may have to spin hundreds of times and
the heads wave all over the place just to open a document. If a file is
less than 20MB and has more than 8 fragments, when you open it, the OS
will try to move the file to somewhere else where all the fragments can
be joined together, so that you can get the lot in one spin of the
disk. If there are no large lumps of free disk of course, it won't work
and thiings go from bad to worse.

On the matter of checkiing whether you have enough memory, If you are
comfortable with the terminal application, try typing this command into
it
top -uSs5 10
That will display a whole lot of stats about your running system.
More precisely the command says show me the top 10 processes sorted
into how much cpu they are using, and display the state of the swap
files too.

near the middle you will see something like
VM: 5.37G + 118M 33972(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts
Swap: 0B + 64.0M free Purgeable: 31.4M 0(0) pages purged

Watch the pageouts over time. If it grows quickly, buy more memory.
The numbers in brackets show the number of memory pages being read or
written at that instant. If you frequently see anything other than 0,
buy more memory. (you will note that my 768 MB is looking pretty good.
It usually has about 2GB of swap and large numbers of pageouts, but I
rebooted the machine yesterday and it has not had enough time to grow
warts.

I'm running the previous v.X of Word on a 768MB Powerbook G4. I
recently did a font tidy. Word is ready to use in 2-5 seconds. I don't
expect word 2004 to be much slower. So you have room for improvement.

 

[Kurt]

384MB is underpowered--the magazine Macworld says it takes 512MB just to
enjoy OS X, and Word is definitely a hungry beast that demands a lot of RAM.
However, something else may also be wrong--even when I had 512MB of RAM I'm
pretty sure it didn't take 50 secs to boot Word. (Now, with 2GB it takes
about 4 seconds, and while I feel my computer is much snappier in general, I
think I would have specifically noted a 10fold decrease in Word launch
time).

In addition, OS X ought to let you do other things while a program is
booting--I do it all the time. That you can't might also be a symptom of
too little memory.

How many fonts do you have, roughly?

Do you have many third-party plug-ins?

Can you create a new user account and see how long it takes to launch there?

PS. Kurt, what is your launch time with 768MB? That might help sort out
what the regular parameters are.

Usually just under a minute. Most of the time is spent on font
optimization.

 

[Steve Emerson]

I wanted to follow up after just now adding RAM for a total 768 MB.

This completely solved the problem (described below). With the
RAM-hungry Firefox, also Mac Mail, Preview, and AppleWorks all open,
Word booted in under 10 seconds; maybe closer to 5. So I'm delighted--no
problem living with this.

Thanks for the suggestions,
SE.

384MB is underpowered--the magazine Macworld says it takes 512MB just to
enjoy OS X, and Word is definitely a hungry beast that demands a lot of RAM.
However, something else may also be wrong--even when I had 512MB of RAM I'm
pretty sure it didn't take 50 secs to boot Word. (Now, with 2GB it takes
about 4 seconds, and while I feel my computer is much snappier in general, I
think I would have specifically noted a 10fold decrease in Word launch
time).

In addition, OS X ought to let you do other things while a program is
booting--I do it all the time. That you can't might also be a symptom of
too little memory. [...]

Word 11.1 is no doubt a very powerful program -- I've found it good at
putting together HTML Web pages, for instance.

But it is such a monster, such a huge beast. On my iMac G4 running OS
10.3.8, to fully boot it takes a minimum of 50 seconds, during which of
course nothing else can be done at the machine. In a test I just made,
without a tremendous number of other apps open (Firefox, Mac mail, MT
Newswatcher, and Appleworks) -- it took 85 seconds.

What was the nature of the preceding Word version for OS X? I don't even
know what it was called; not having gone to OS X until earlier this
year. Should I try it?

Second question -- my RAM is finite, I've got 384 MB. Would Word 11.1
load faster if I had more (I realize I should have more anyway, but that
would be a big goad)?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

It's great to get confirmation, Steve. Thanks for posting back!

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

I wanted to follow up after just now adding RAM for a total 768 MB.

This completely solved the problem (described below). With the
RAM-hungry Firefox, also Mac Mail, Preview, and AppleWorks all open,
Word booted in under 10 seconds; maybe closer to 5. So I'm delighted--no
problem living with this.

Thanks for the suggestions,
SE.

384MB is underpowered--the magazine Macworld says it takes 512MB just to
enjoy OS X, and Word is definitely a hungry beast that demands a lot of RAM.
However, something else may also be wrong--even when I had 512MB of RAM I'm
pretty sure it didn't take 50 secs to boot Word. (Now, with 2GB it takes
about 4 seconds, and while I feel my computer is much snappier in general, I
think I would have specifically noted a 10fold decrease in Word launch
time).

In addition, OS X ought to let you do other things while a program is
booting--I do it all the time. That you can't might also be a symptom of
too little memory. [...]

Word 11.1 is no doubt a very powerful program -- I've found it good at
putting together HTML Web pages, for instance.

But it is such a monster, such a huge beast. On my iMac G4 running OS
10.3.8, to fully boot it takes a minimum of 50 seconds, during which of
course nothing else can be done at the machine. In a test I just made,
without a tremendous number of other apps open (Firefox, Mac mail, MT
Newswatcher, and Appleworks) -- it took 85 seconds.

What was the nature of the preceding Word version for OS X? I don't even
know what it was called; not having gone to OS X until earlier this
year. Should I try it?

Second question -- my RAM is finite, I've got 384 MB. Would Word 11.1
load faster if I had more (I realize I should have more anyway, but that
would be a big goad)?