You can't. It's a tuning issue in the operating system. Basically, the OS
is taking a lengthy interval (sometimes, several seconds) to return control
to Word.
The reason you see it more in Word than in any other application is that
Word is multi-threaded. The system queues all of your keystrokes and
mouse-clicks waiting for the application for which they are destined to
receive control from the OS.
In Word this takes longer because it is a larger application with multiple
independent threads running.
After a while, you get used to it
You may find that the standard mouse
exhibits the problem to a lesser degree, because it is a System device that
runs at a higher priority. But I doubt it.
You will improve things by Quitting applications you are not using, instead
of minimising them. The way OS X works, it allocates CPU time in turn to
each open application, whether it is doing anything or not. The time slices
it allocates to applications that are not doing anything contribute to the
time you wait for a busy application to respond.
All pre-emptively multitasking operating systems do this, but ones that are
designed for desktop service allocate far smaller time slices so that they
appear more responsive. Windows handles this by elevating the priority of
the foreground application, providing very small time slices, and having
multiple messaging queues to handle communication between applications.
Windows XP appears very slick and responsive because the lengthy waits are
happening to applications you aren't using
We have to remember that Windows is an old and mature product that was
designed for desktop operation from the get-go, while OS X is a relatively
new operating system. The underlying Unix core was designed more for
midrange and mainframe service than desktop use. So there are a few
opportunities for improvements we can expect to see in the future.
In the meantime, Word gets to wait in the queue along with everything else,
and we have an opportunity to acquire patience. You do get used to it after
a while
Cheers
I have a Mac G5 OS 10.3.6 with a wireless Logitech mouse. The mouse
works fine with all aplications except with Word 2004.
Word 2004 is very slow, slower than Word X, which responded to all my
mouse activities.
Now, Word 2004 will not respond immediately to my mouse commands
(scrolling) and it will just do all of them at once after a while. The
mouse works fine in other applications running simultaneously.
How can I improve the response of Word 2004?
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John McGhie <
[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
