Word 2004 under Rosetta hogs CPU when processing large documents

[rkowal]

Hello

I cannot work on my PhD with Word 2004 on a 1st-generation MacBook.
Whenever I open the 250-page document (with table of contents, and
embedded .png graphs), and begin scrolling down, CPU goes up to 80% or
more, and very soon the fan starts to work - which disturbs me too
much to keep working on the document for hours. And I do need to
scroll a lot. I have implemented some of the proposed remedies I found
on the web, such as deleting my Normal-template, and excluding the
Microsoft User Data folder from spotlight searches. I've also disabled
everything in Word that looks like a potential CPU-hog, such as live
word-count, feedback with animation, spell-checking, etc - to no
avail.

I have also suspected that my Phd-document might be corrupted. So I
tried this: I saved it as a .txt file, and then copied and pasted the
text into a fresh word document: no change in symptoms. In fact, I'm
pretty sure that it's not a problem to do with file corruption, or
with the size of the document, as the same problems occur in most of
my other medium-sized Word documents, just not as extremely as in that
long one.

My current work-around is quite absurd: I'm running Microsoft Office
2007 in Parallels. It is ridiculous to see how much faster I can
scroll my PhD-document with Word 2007 running in WinXP on top of Mac
OS X, than with Word 2004 under Rosetta (not to mention that there is
no initial delay when scrolling). Moreover, Parallels never goes
beyond 20-30% CPU, and my fan stays off. But it is a clumsy set-up
nevertheless, which takes away 512MB of my RAM. Can anyone here
suggest a way to keep my MacBook quiet when running Word 2004, so I
can go back to a Mac OS X-only environment?

Robert

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Robert -

Your "absurd work-around" isn't really so absurd - Rosetta is an obligatory
& temporary "bridge" to a radically different base processor whereas
Parallels is a commercial product designed to make money on its own. Since
it *doesn't* run through Rosetta your tapping far more of the Intel chip's
power... And Office 2007 is a much cleaner software architecture than 2004.
You'd be less impressed if you were running 2003 in Parallels ;-)

However, to address your issues the only additional suggestions I have are:

1- Increase RAM as much as you can,

2- Make sure you have ample HD space (at least 20% free space)- perhaps even
invest in an ext. FW drive,

3- Get accustomed to working in Normal View rather than Page Layout View if
you haven't already done so. That's what it's there for... To provide faster
performance during edits & revisions by not having to be dragged along by
floating graphics,

4- If possible, consider working with Linked graphics rather than Embedded,

5- Make sure that no other apps or utilities are running in the background.

You'll probably get some additional ideas from others before long so keep
checking back.

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

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

Hi Robert:

Yeah, well all I can do is reinforce everything Bob has said. He has hit
all the "go faster" tricks that we know of.

As you have now discovered, Rosetta is a very busy little piece of software
It has to be: it has to flip every single instruction in the program
end-for-end, since the Intel processor expresses its binary codes in reverse
layout to that of the PowerPC. And PowerPC code has almost exactly twice as
many instructions to do a given function from the Intel code.

I could go on forever about this: but basically a powerful reason for Apple
to make the switch away from the PowerPC processor is that programs for the
PPC are twice the size of the same program compiled for the Intel processor.
Rosetta has to translate the instructions from one format to the other. And
then you get the problem where the Intel processor is having to process
twice as many instructions, and is not taking advantage of its more complex
instructions. A program compiled natively for Intel can take advantage of
the X86's complex instructions to do some complex things in a single
instruction that the PowerPC may express in as many as ten individual
instructions.

In Parallels, you are running native Intel code in Native Intel code within
Native Intel code. Everything is optimised for the processor you are using.

And, as you are beinging to suspect, the evidence is that Microsoft Word
2004 for the Mac was always painfully inefficient Testing I did
convinced me that Word 2003 was something like ten times more efficient than
Word 2004. I hope Microsoft is putting a big effort into efficiency in the
next version! However, we should realise that "efficiency" is one of the
most expensive things to build into a piece of software, and regrettably,
only a tiny fraction of Office 2008 users will even notice whether the
software is efficient or not.

I run Word with documents up to around 2,000 pages for a living, so I find
out which ones go and which ones don't almost immediately. But the users
Word is designed for rarely push it beyond 100 pages in a document, so they
never notice

My testinf of Word 2007 has so far been limited. But everything I have
found so far indicates that this one really rocks. The other thing I find
is that Word 2007 will utilise a very powerful computer if you provide one.
I was doing some processing on some large documents yesterday. I was amused
to hear the fans fire up on a large dual Zeon workstation. And the
allocated memory jumped up above 3 GB too. But there was a hell of a lot of
work being accomplished faster than I have ever seen Word running before!

I don't mind it helping itself to a bit of memory and CPU if it's going to
get the work done faster. But like yourself, I get a bit hard to live with
if I have to sit there for hours with the computer bawling like a Dustbuster
and nothing much happening

Cheers

--

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

http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

3- Get accustomed to working in Normal View rather than Page Layout View if
you haven't already done so. That's what it's there for... To provide faster
performance during edits & revisions by not having to be dragged along by
floating graphics,

4- If possible, consider working with Linked graphics rather than Embedded,

You can also use Image Placeholders (Word | Preferences | View), which
may help with graphics.

 

[rkowal]

You can also use Image Placeholders (Word | Preferences | View), which
may help with graphics.

Thanks for all your replies, remedies, reflections, guys.
Most of what's suggested above, I had already thought of myself; it
helps only minimally, apart from switching to 'Normal' view, which
unfortunately I just hate working in. So I guess I will be running two
operating systems in parallel (which is somehow a bit schizophrenic)
on a daily basis until late 2007... . Here's hoping with John that
Microsoft Word 2008 will be at least a fraction as efficient as Word
2007, and that I won't have gone crazy until then.

Cheers

Robert