Word 2004

[Russ Bankson]

I am using a Quick Silver 733 MHZ PPC with 896mb RAM
Word 2004 Version 11.3.5

Word performance is absurdly slow. It responds to mouse and key commands at
at a glacial pace often performing the wrong action.

Is this memory management issue? If I close other programs would this
improve performance? I never experienced this with the Word X,

 

[Russ Bankson]

Good thoughts Yes I have upgraded HD and currently have 70GB remaining

I haven't upgraded memory because I was consdering new system but this is
probably worth doing

I was unclear I believe the "wrong action" is due to rapid multiple actions
exceeding cache

BTW is that RAM cache?

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello Russ -

One thought right off - That model shipped with a 40 GB drive 6 years ago,
so if you haven't upgraded your HD you might be running low on free space.
How much free space do you have available? If less than 10-12 GB that's
probably contributing to the slowness. Also, that configuration would
benefit greatly if the RAM was boosted to <at least> 1 GB. OS X & Word
require plenty of each in order to perform well.

It would definitely help to limit any other processes, and launching Word
before anything else may boost things a bit as well.

In addition to all that, what concerns me the most is "...performing the
wrong action" - that suggests something could be sagging at the system
level. Even with low RAM & lack of HD space the keyboard & mouse shouldn't
do the wrong things. It could give that impression if the actions are being
taken in rapid succession that out-runs the caching capability, I guess, but
I'm not sure what "wrong action" actually means... If you type the letter
"a" you should get an "a" rather than a "b" even if you have to wait 10
minutes for it

 

[John McGhie]

With that amount of memory, it's not RAM you're out of. Something is
hogging the CPU.

Hop into Activity Monitor and see what's hogging all the CPU.

Do a re-boot and hold down the Shift key to disable all the startup items.
You may have a haxie in there that is interfering between keyboard and
application.

Replace your preferences and your Normal template, as explained here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/TroubleshootingIndex.html

Cheers

I am using a Quick Silver 733 MHZ PPC with 896mb RAM
Word 2004 Version 11.3.5

Word performance is absurdly slow. It responds to mouse and key commands at
at a glacial pace often performing the wrong action.

Is this memory management issue? If I close other programs would this
improve performance? I never experienced this with the Word X,

--
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/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

<snip>
I was unclear I believe the "wrong action" is due to rapid multiple actions
exceeding cache

BTW is that RAM cache?
<snip>

I wasn't referring to a RAM cache - in fact I should have used the word
"buffer". As you type, the system captures the keystrokes & passes them on.
In most cases the process is so fast that it isn't an issue - not even
noticeable. But if the processor is tied up & the keystrokes can't be passed
on immediately they are "buffered" until the cpu is free. The buffer only
has a certain capacity, so if the processor is tied up for an extended
period while you continue typing there is a delay in performance & it's
"possible" for the buffer to overflow. If that happens, some keystrokes
don't get captured & when the system "catches up" to you it seems to be
doing something other than what was expected. Since this is quite uncommon
(rare, to be honest) because of the speed of just about anything made since
the mid 1990s I tend to agree with John McGhie that there are "other forces"
at work. Follow hais suggestions to help determine what they may be.