SLOW typing response time using Mac Office 2008

[MacDawg]

System: 15" PowerBook G4, 1.5 GHz Power PC, 2 GB RAM, OS X 10.4.11

I installed Mac Office 2008 yesterday, and there is a LONG delay between my typing and the text appearing on the screen. This is not an issue with other programs nor when I was using Office 2004.

Anyone else having this problem? Any solutions?

 

[John McGhie]

There are one or two things that could cause this.

You may have left the Progress Window open in Entourage. There's a but that
will cause this (but I did not think it affected OS 10.4)

You may have a corrupt document.

Or you may be out of memory.

Reboot to clear out your memory and see if that changes anything.

Start Activity Monitor and have a look to see if anything is hogging your
processor.

Close all Word documents, create a new blank document, and try again. If
it's OK in the blank document, the other document you have is corrupt.

Copy all but the last paragraph mark to a new document and save as a new
file name. See if that fixes it.

Come back and tell us what you found.

Hope this helps

System: 15" PowerBook G4, 1.5 GHz Power PC, 2 GB RAM, OS X 10.4.11

I installed Mac Office 2008 yesterday, and there is a LONG delay between my
typing and the text appearing on the screen. This is not an issue with other
programs nor when I was using Office 2004.

Anyone else having this problem? Any solutions?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[MacDawg]

Thank you for these suggestions, John. I believe it was mainly a memory issue, but if you (or others reading this) want the details, here is what I did:

1. I did not install Entourage, so I can't comment on whether an Entourage Project Window might cause this problem. [I used to use Entourage 2004 along with my Treo and Missing Sync, but when Entourage corrupted and then erased my contacts, I uninstalled it and began using Apple's programs.]

2. Because I was initially editing "old" .doc and .xls documents, some which I was saving in the new XML formats, I suspected that this might cause a slower typing response. However, I did not notice any difference in typing response times between the "old" and "new" formats.

3. Activity Monitor did not look unusual (about 500-750 MB free) at the time.

4. I closed all documents and opened a new one--same slow typing response. The cut-and-paste-without-final-formatted-paragraph-mark suggestion did not improve the problem for me.

5. I rebooted to clear the RAM, and then I opened Activity Monitor. All resources available. I opened Word 2008 and started typing in a new document and noticed a marked improvement in the response time, including when I held down the delete key to delete an entire word or sentence (something that was sloooooow before despite my System Preference being set for the fastest key response time).

But I usually have Safari 3.0.4 running in the background, usually with multiple tabs/windows open. As soon as I opened Safari and a few sites, Activity Monitor showed Safari hogging nearly all my RAM. Returning to Word 3008, the typing response time was slower, leading me to agree with your suggestion that my problem might be memory related.

This leaves me with three complaints/concerns:

1. When did 2 GB of RAM become a de facto minimum requirement to run and use two programs without a severe decline in program response time?

2. Safari 3.0 is a MUCH bigger drain on my system resources than was 2.0.

3. I am waiting to upgrade to Leopard after the significant 10.5.2 update is released, but now I'm concerned that it may slow down my PowerBook even more. I am planning to purchase a 24" iMac in the next 2 months, and though I want to work with just one OS version, I am reluctant to slow down my PowerBook even more.

Thank you again for your comments, John. They were very helpful.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi MacDawg -

<snip>

I held down the delete key to delete an entire word or sentence

<snip>

I hope you were just doing this to test the difference in performance and
that it isn't your typical editing technique If that's how you normally
work you might want to try:

1- from the beginning of a word, Command+del to delete it, from the back-end
use Command+delete, or double-click the word & press either del or delete,

2- for a sentence, Command+click anywhere in it to select, then press del or
delete (for a para, triple-click to select)

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Hi:

Anything running on a PPC needs twice the memory of something running on
Intel, and as you have discovered, Wirth's Law remains in effect.

Wirth's law sates "Software gets slower at a greater rate than hardware gets
faster."

PPC software is built from a Reduced Instruction Set. The CPU instructions
are simpler (and thus faster to decode) but because they are simpler, you
need about twice as many of them to do the same job.

Which occupies twice the memory. Word 2008 runs very nicely in 2GB of
memory (WITH Safari and Skype and Adium and QuickTime and Entourage and
.....) all running here on a MacBook Intel.

Yes, OS 10.5 will slow your PowerBook down even more. Which is one reason
why I haven't installed it either. I'll go up in a couple of years when I
buy a new machine.

Cheers

Thank you for these suggestions, John. I believe it was mainly a memory issue,
but if you (or others reading this) want the details, here is what I did:

5. I rebooted to clear the RAM, and then I opened Activity Monitor. All
resources available. I opened Word 2008 and started typing in a new document
and noticed a marked improvement in the response time, including when I held
down the delete key to delete an entire word or sentence (something that was
sloooooow before despite my System Preference being set for the fastest key
response time).

But I usually have Safari 3.0.4 running in the background, usually with
multiple tabs/windows open. As soon as I opened Safari and a few sites,
Activity Monitor showed Safari hogging nearly all my RAM. Returning to Word
3008, the typing response time was slower, leading me to agree with your
suggestion that my problem might be memory related.

This leaves me with three complaints/concerns:

1. When did 2 GB of RAM become a de facto minimum requirement to run and use
two programs without a severe decline in program response time?

2. Safari 3.0 is a MUCH bigger drain on my system resources than was 2.0.

3. I am waiting to upgrade to Leopard after the significant 10.5.2 update is
released, but now I'm concerned that it may slow down my PowerBook even more.
I am planning to purchase a 24" iMac in the next 2 months, and though I want
to work with just one OS version, I am reluctant to slow down my PowerBook
even more.

Thank you again for your comments, John. They were very helpful.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]