Word still takes up 10% of my CPU at times, doing nothing

[Nate Goldshlag]

The subject says it all. I have a 1 GHz Powerbook G4 and there are
times when Word, even with no document open, takes up 10% of my CPU as
reported by top. Not always, and I couldn't tell you what triggers
this, but sometimes. Quitting and relaunching Word fixes it. This
existed in Word X also.

All of the Office applications still have the annoying habit of asking
if you want to make changes even if all you do is print or sometimes
just open the document. This is most annoying and has never been
fixed.

 

[Elliott Roper]

The subject says it all. I have a 1 GHz Powerbook G4 and there are
times when Word, even with no document open, takes up 10% of my CPU as
reported by top. Not always, and I couldn't tell you what triggers
this, but sometimes. Quitting and relaunching Word fixes it. This
existed in Word X also.

All of the Office applications still have the annoying habit of asking
if you want to make changes even if all you do is print or sometimes
just open the document. This is most annoying and has never been
fixed.

Don't sweat too much about it Nate. It is low priority cpu. If someone
else really wants that 10%, Office will give it up without a fight.
Try top while running Word and converting iTunes from MP3 to AAC if you
don't believe me.
I have not looked into why, but I suspect that it is tied up with Word
still using the Carbon frameworks. Carbon is obsessed with event loops
to dispatch the various threads of execution. Numpty design, but it has
been the paradigm of choice of trad mac, trad windows and X11 since the
beginning of time.

(Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice was playing on the radio as I typed that.
Perfect music to accompany an event loop -- races round like a headless
chicken looking for things to do.)

As for the Save inquisition, I think it behaves quite sanely. Sometimes
the change is tiny and inconsequential, like which printer, or the size
of window you are viewing it in, but that is still worth offering you
the choice. Imagine how annoying it would be to do the reverse? I have
never seen Word present the dialog if I have done absolutely nothing.

Yikes! I have said two nice things about Word. Normal service will be
resumed shortly.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

All of the Office applications still have the annoying habit of asking
if you want to make changes even if all you do is print or sometimes
just open the document. This is most annoying and has never been
fixed.

As for the Save inquisition, I think it behaves quite sanely. Sometimes
the change is tiny and inconsequential, like which printer, or the size
of window you are viewing it in, but that is still worth offering you
the choice. Imagine how annoying it would be to do the reverse? I have
never seen Word present the dialog if I have done absolutely nothing.[/QUOTE]

For XL, it's usually due to having volatile function in the sheet, like
TODAY(), NOW(), RAND(), OFFSET(), INDIRECT(), etc.

Even if you don't see a change in the value, the calculation occurs, and
the file is marked as dirty - needing a save.

 

[Nate Goldshlag]

Don't sweat too much about it Nate. It is low priority cpu. If someone
else really wants that 10%, Office will give it up without a fight.
Try top while running Word and converting iTunes from MP3 to AAC if you
don't believe me.
I have not looked into why, but I suspect that it is tied up with Word
still using the Carbon frameworks. Carbon is obsessed with event loops
to dispatch the various threads of execution. Numpty design, but it has
been the paradigm of choice of trad mac, trad windows and X11 since the
beginning of time.

(Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice was playing on the radio as I typed that.
Perfect music to accompany an event loop -- races round like a headless
chicken looking for things to do.)

As for the Save inquisition, I think it behaves quite sanely. Sometimes
the change is tiny and inconsequential, like which printer, or the size
of window you are viewing it in, but that is still worth offering you
the choice. Imagine how annoying it would be to do the reverse? I have
never seen Word present the dialog if I have done absolutely nothing.

I can't confirm what you say about the 10%. All I can say is I run
other Carbon applications, including Excel, and Word is the only one I
have ever seen hog the CPU like this.

And it is *completely* lame if you open a document to view it and print
and then you get the dialog about saving changes. Again, the Microsoft
applications seem to be unique in doing this annoying thing.

Nate

 

[Nate Goldshlag]

Don't sweat too much about it Nate. It is low priority cpu. If someone
else really wants that 10%, Office will give it up without a fight.
Try top while running Word and converting iTunes from MP3 to AAC if you
don't believe me.
I have not looked into why, but I suspect that it is tied up with Word
still using the Carbon frameworks. Carbon is obsessed with event loops
to dispatch the various threads of execution. Numpty design, but it has
been the paradigm of choice of trad mac, trad windows and X11 since the
beginning of time.

I finally had a chance to test this. Word was taking up close to 10%
doing nothing and I launched a completely processor intensive task
that, left to its own devices will take up over 90% of the CPU. Guess
what? Word kept on taking up its 10%. So, as I thought, it is doing
the wrong thing. No other Carbon application I have seen does this.

 

[Elliott Roper]

<[email protected]> wrote:

I finally had a chance to test this. Word was taking up close to 10%
doing nothing and I launched a completely processor intensive task
that, left to its own devices will take up over 90% of the CPU. Guess
what? Word kept on taking up its 10%. So, as I thought, it is doing
the wrong thing. No other Carbon application I have seen does this.

Sorry I misled you about this. I did some tests ages ago which sorta
looked like it gave up easily. You could try nice-ing it from the
terminal, but there is not much point is there?

 

[ucecrusher46]

this.

Sorry I misled you about this. I did some tests ages ago which sorta
looked like it gave up easily. You could try nice-ing it from the
terminal, but there is not much point is there?