B
Beth Rosengard
My pleasure, Pitch. But did you check for possible third-party conflicts as
I suggested?
Beth
I suggested?
Beth
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
J
Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]
Hey Pitch,
I'd love to see that QuickTime File! If it's not too big you can email it
to me at: (e-mail address removed) and if you could include the document used
that would be great as well.
--
Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
I'd love to see that QuickTime File! If it's not too big you can email it
to me at: (e-mail address removed) and if you could include the document used
that would be great as well.
--
Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
P
Pitch
Hi Jeffrey, Many thanks, this is great. I am going to put together a
little QT with audio, and email it to you. Give me a few days, as I'm
in the middle of a writing project. If it ends up being too big, I'll
post it on my site, and then email you the link. I'd rather make it
complete and not worry too much about size. I was actually looking at
some other outline programs yesterday, like Mellel, so thanks again for
wanting to deal with this.
little QT with audio, and email it to you. Give me a few days, as I'm
in the middle of a writing project. If it ends up being too big, I'll
post it on my site, and then email you the link. I'd rather make it
complete and not worry too much about size. I was actually looking at
some other outline programs yesterday, like Mellel, so thanks again for
wanting to deal with this.
D
Daiya Mitchell
A link would be nice so we could all see it. I definitely see occasional
slowness to screen refresh in Word 2004, but not a full second to scroll,
even in a long document.
Okay, well, I didn't when I tested it before. I just tried a 400page
document in Page Layout view and got more slowness--and the scroll wheel has
problems, but clicking on the scroll bar is pretty immediate.
slowness to screen refresh in Word 2004, but not a full second to scroll,
even in a long document.
Okay, well, I didn't when I tested it before. I just tried a 400page
document in Page Layout view and got more slowness--and the scroll wheel has
problems, but clicking on the scroll bar is pretty immediate.
J
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
Hi Pitch:
It's interesting: I do get some pauses in Word, but nothing like you
describe. And I am using a much more modest 1.2 GHz iBook with a gig of RAM
-- not a fire-breather by any means.
So maybe it's worth persisting in your search for this problem.
I would ask if you have any add-ins, haxies, internet accelerators, or other
power- or interrupt-hogging utilities installed. For example, gigabit
Ethernet will slow a computer to a crawl if the network is busy, simply with
the CPU time taken listening for network traffic. But you said "Word is the
only application running", so it can't be that, right?
I think your problem may be a "thread priority problem". A "thread" is,
simplistically, an independent part of a program.
Each time you do something in Word, Word has to wait until the OS hands some
CPU time to it to execute its function. It's waiting too long.
OS X Unix has a problem with tuning: it's not as slick as Windows.
Basically, it's handing out time slices that are too long. It should be
allocating much shorter slices much more often.
I can't remember the numbers, but lets assume that OS X allocates slices 20
milliseconds long, and divides its time equally to every thread running at
the time. Each thread then gets to wait (number of threads running) * 20
milliseconds for each bite at the CPU.
In the case of Word, it often needs only a few microseconds of time,
particularly on a machine as fast as yours, so it's doing nothing for 19.970
milliseconds of the time it is allocated. As is every other thread on the
box.
This explanation is, necessarily, simplistic. OS X has improved a lot. A
Unix guru could fiddle around with your OS configuration files to achieve
blistering performance from Word, of course at the expense of other
applications. On the other hand, if someone has already been playing with
your system preferences, that could explain the problem.
But the real fix is for Word to get more efficient, and OS X to get better
tuning. I guess we will just have to wait for Apple and Microsoft to do
their thing.
Sorry
--
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
It's interesting: I do get some pauses in Word, but nothing like you
describe. And I am using a much more modest 1.2 GHz iBook with a gig of RAM
-- not a fire-breather by any means.
So maybe it's worth persisting in your search for this problem.
I would ask if you have any add-ins, haxies, internet accelerators, or other
power- or interrupt-hogging utilities installed. For example, gigabit
Ethernet will slow a computer to a crawl if the network is busy, simply with
the CPU time taken listening for network traffic. But you said "Word is the
only application running", so it can't be that, right?
I think your problem may be a "thread priority problem". A "thread" is,
simplistically, an independent part of a program.
Each time you do something in Word, Word has to wait until the OS hands some
CPU time to it to execute its function. It's waiting too long.
OS X Unix has a problem with tuning: it's not as slick as Windows.
Basically, it's handing out time slices that are too long. It should be
allocating much shorter slices much more often.
I can't remember the numbers, but lets assume that OS X allocates slices 20
milliseconds long, and divides its time equally to every thread running at
the time. Each thread then gets to wait (number of threads running) * 20
milliseconds for each bite at the CPU.
In the case of Word, it often needs only a few microseconds of time,
particularly on a machine as fast as yours, so it's doing nothing for 19.970
milliseconds of the time it is allocated. As is every other thread on the
box.
This explanation is, necessarily, simplistic. OS X has improved a lot. A
Unix guru could fiddle around with your OS configuration files to achieve
blistering performance from Word, of course at the expense of other
applications. On the other hand, if someone has already been playing with
your system preferences, that could explain the problem.
But the real fix is for Word to get more efficient, and OS X to get better
tuning. I guess we will just have to wait for Apple and Microsoft to do
their thing.
Sorry
PS: I would actually be willing to do a lot more to this cause than
just send the document. I'd be willing to take a QuickTime movie,
competely with sound, of what happens on my screen while I'm using Word
2004. I will also be one who will be upgrading to Tiger the second it
comes out on the 29th. My plan, largely to see if I can speed up Word,
will be to zero one of my G5's drives, and then add ONLY Office 2004.
Then run some speed tests.
--
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
R
RKB
I too am frustrated the performance of Word 2004. It seems to place a
huge demand on the OS for reasons that escape me. Let me explain:
My machine is a new 2X2GHz G5 with 2 GB of RAM running OS 10.3.9. I
use Word daily to write patent applications and scientific manuscripts
which are typically 40-80 pages in length containing several tables but
typically no images or other unusual components. I do use EndNote
Version 8 and "Cite While You Write" (CWYW) and virtually every
document has embedded Endnote citations and a bibliography. I note
that Beth has stated that there is a conflict with CWYW and Word 2004.
The only reason I use Word is because my documents get sent all over
the world for review and editing and I can count on broad OS
compatibility. If this were not the case, I'd be using Pages which I
will soon be trialing to due to my frustrations with Word.
When I open a document, both CPUs seem to run at 50% of max (using
Activity Monitor) and the fans come on to cool things off. I
understand that the program need to use the CPUs but this will go on
for a long time and sometimes both CPUs will peak at 100%, the fans
will really start spinning and then I quit Word and start over. This
is with a document open and me reading a paper and not making any
keyboard entries. What is this program doing? With an open document
and no keyboard activity, the CPUs will get maxed out at 100%.
The program is "stable" in that it will do what I want even at the 50%
CPU activity level but it seems very sluggish and sometimes key entries
are delayed a fraction of a second or more which is annoying.
I did remove the startup items (Endnote and Adobe files) from the
Applications/MS Office2004/Office/Startup/Word folder but this did not
help. I have also turned off everything including spell and grammer
check without any resolution of the issue.
This is directed at Beth who seems to know something about the Endnote
conflict. Is that the problem? Is there a workaround?
Best regards,
Rick
huge demand on the OS for reasons that escape me. Let me explain:
My machine is a new 2X2GHz G5 with 2 GB of RAM running OS 10.3.9. I
use Word daily to write patent applications and scientific manuscripts
which are typically 40-80 pages in length containing several tables but
typically no images or other unusual components. I do use EndNote
Version 8 and "Cite While You Write" (CWYW) and virtually every
document has embedded Endnote citations and a bibliography. I note
that Beth has stated that there is a conflict with CWYW and Word 2004.
The only reason I use Word is because my documents get sent all over
the world for review and editing and I can count on broad OS
compatibility. If this were not the case, I'd be using Pages which I
will soon be trialing to due to my frustrations with Word.
When I open a document, both CPUs seem to run at 50% of max (using
Activity Monitor) and the fans come on to cool things off. I
understand that the program need to use the CPUs but this will go on
for a long time and sometimes both CPUs will peak at 100%, the fans
will really start spinning and then I quit Word and start over. This
is with a document open and me reading a paper and not making any
keyboard entries. What is this program doing? With an open document
and no keyboard activity, the CPUs will get maxed out at 100%.
The program is "stable" in that it will do what I want even at the 50%
CPU activity level but it seems very sluggish and sometimes key entries
are delayed a fraction of a second or more which is annoying.
I did remove the startup items (Endnote and Adobe files) from the
Applications/MS Office2004/Office/Startup/Word folder but this did not
help. I have also turned off everything including spell and grammer
check without any resolution of the issue.
This is directed at Beth who seems to know something about the Endnote
conflict. Is that the problem? Is there a workaround?
Best regards,
Rick
B
Beth Rosengard
I too am frustrated the performance of Word 2004. It seems to place a
huge demand on the OS for reasons that escape me. Let me explain:
My machine is a new 2X2GHz G5 with 2 GB of RAM running OS 10.3.9. I
use Word daily to write patent applications and scientific manuscripts
which are typically 40-80 pages in length containing several tables but
typically no images or other unusual components. I do use EndNote
Version 8 and "Cite While You Write" (CWYW) and virtually every
document has embedded Endnote citations and a bibliography. I note
that Beth has stated that there is a conflict with CWYW and Word 2004.
The only reason I use Word is because my documents get sent all over
the world for review and editing and I can count on broad OS
compatibility. If this were not the case, I'd be using Pages which I
will soon be trialing to due to my frustrations with Word.
When I open a document, both CPUs seem to run at 50% of max (using
Activity Monitor) and the fans come on to cool things off. I
understand that the program need to use the CPUs but this will go on
for a long time and sometimes both CPUs will peak at 100%, the fans
will really start spinning and then I quit Word and start over. This
is with a document open and me reading a paper and not making any
keyboard entries. What is this program doing? With an open document
and no keyboard activity, the CPUs will get maxed out at 100%.
The program is "stable" in that it will do what I want even at the 50%
CPU activity level but it seems very sluggish and sometimes key entries
are delayed a fraction of a second or more which is annoying.
I did remove the startup items (Endnote and Adobe files) from the
Applications/MS Office2004/Office/Startup/Word folder but this did not
help. I have also turned off everything including spell and grammer
check without any resolution of the issue.
This is directed at Beth who seems to know something about the Endnote
conflict. Is that the problem? Is there a workaround?
Actually, Daiya knows more about Endnote problems than I do. But if you
removed the CWYW add-in (and other add-ins) from the Word Startup folder,
then you pretty much eliminated it as the cause. The best I can recommend
at this point is to read back through this whole thread (if you haven't
already) and then Google this group for "slow Word 2004" (no quotes) and see
if you can turn up anything else.
Word 2004 *is* slower than, say, Word 2001, but it shouldn't be so slow as
to cause great frustration nor should it spike the CPUs like that. What
View are you working in? Normal view will be faster than Page Layout or
Outline. Also, it may be worth reading through the other troubleshooting
procedures you'll find here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another browser
for this site.)
Hope something here helps.
--
***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>
J
Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]
Hey Rick,
Could you elaborate on what you mean by:
Are you referring to general typing with "key entries" or keyboard commands?
If so which ones?
Thanks for the other information as well.
--
Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft
I too am frustrated the performance of Word 2004. It seems to place a
huge demand on the OS for reasons that escape me. Let me explain:
My machine is a new 2X2GHz G5 with 2 GB of RAM running OS 10.3.9. I
use Word daily to write patent applications and scientific manuscripts
which are typically 40-80 pages in length containing several tables but
typically no images or other unusual components. I do use EndNote
Version 8 and "Cite While You Write" (CWYW) and virtually every
document has embedded Endnote citations and a bibliography. I note
that Beth has stated that there is a conflict with CWYW and Word 2004.
The only reason I use Word is because my documents get sent all over
the world for review and editing and I can count on broad OS
compatibility. If this were not the case, I'd be using Pages which I
will soon be trialing to due to my frustrations with Word.
When I open a document, both CPUs seem to run at 50% of max (using
Activity Monitor) and the fans come on to cool things off. I
understand that the program need to use the CPUs but this will go on
for a long time and sometimes both CPUs will peak at 100%, the fans
will really start spinning and then I quit Word and start over. This
is with a document open and me reading a paper and not making any
keyboard entries. What is this program doing? With an open document
and no keyboard activity, the CPUs will get maxed out at 100%.
The program is "stable" in that it will do what I want even at the 50%
CPU activity level but it seems very sluggish and sometimes key entries
are delayed a fraction of a second or more which is annoying.
I did remove the startup items (Endnote and Adobe files) from the
Applications/MS Office2004/Office/Startup/Word folder but this did not
help. I have also turned off everything including spell and grammer
check without any resolution of the issue.
This is directed at Beth who seems to know something about the Endnote
conflict. Is that the problem? Is there a workaround?
Best regards,
Rick
Could you elaborate on what you mean by:
it seems very sluggish and sometimes key entries are
delayed a fraction of a second or more which is annoying.
Are you referring to general typing with "key entries" or keyboard commands?
If so which ones?
Thanks for the other information as well.
--
Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft
I too am frustrated the performance of Word 2004. It seems to place a
huge demand on the OS for reasons that escape me. Let me explain:
My machine is a new 2X2GHz G5 with 2 GB of RAM running OS 10.3.9. I
use Word daily to write patent applications and scientific manuscripts
which are typically 40-80 pages in length containing several tables but
typically no images or other unusual components. I do use EndNote
Version 8 and "Cite While You Write" (CWYW) and virtually every
document has embedded Endnote citations and a bibliography. I note
that Beth has stated that there is a conflict with CWYW and Word 2004.
The only reason I use Word is because my documents get sent all over
the world for review and editing and I can count on broad OS
compatibility. If this were not the case, I'd be using Pages which I
will soon be trialing to due to my frustrations with Word.
When I open a document, both CPUs seem to run at 50% of max (using
Activity Monitor) and the fans come on to cool things off. I
understand that the program need to use the CPUs but this will go on
for a long time and sometimes both CPUs will peak at 100%, the fans
will really start spinning and then I quit Word and start over. This
is with a document open and me reading a paper and not making any
keyboard entries. What is this program doing? With an open document
and no keyboard activity, the CPUs will get maxed out at 100%.
The program is "stable" in that it will do what I want even at the 50%
CPU activity level but it seems very sluggish and sometimes key entries
are delayed a fraction of a second or more which is annoying.
I did remove the startup items (Endnote and Adobe files) from the
Applications/MS Office2004/Office/Startup/Word folder but this did not
help. I have also turned off everything including spell and grammer
check without any resolution of the issue.
This is directed at Beth who seems to know something about the Endnote
conflict. Is that the problem? Is there a workaround?
Best regards,
Rick
Ask a Question
Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?
You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.