Office 2008 - Why so slow?

[powerbook911]

I just got my free upgrade copy to Office 2008 Special Media Edition. It's incredibly slow. I'm using it on my current 2.4 GHZ iMac with 3 GB of memory. Sometimes the applications open in decent times, others, especially powerpoint, takes forever. Furthermore, once they are open, the program is unresponsive the next few seconds, and sometimes in the middle of doing something they get sluggish. Any ideas? Are all of you experiencing this more or less?

I sure won't be putting it on my G4, since my 2.4 GHZ Core 2 Duo can't seem to handle it. ha-ha.

[macRat17]

i would like to know as well. There was all this rave about how its faster compared to office04 but frankly i dont notice a difference.

[johny5]

I noticed a "marginal" speed increase although I am sure M$ puts the brakes on these products so in contrast they look a hell of a lot quicker on Windows pc's

[lostfan916]

Word took 17 bounces right now... it used to take about 10 with 04.
PP opens faster (less bounces) however...it takes like 30 seconds for anything to happen or appear after it's stopped bouncing on the dock. I'm not too happy...

[gloves]

I seem to recall reading some posts that indicated something related to fonts was the cause of slow loading times for Office 2008 apps. I can't quite remember exactly what it was in relation to, but it was definitely related to fonts!

If you do a search on here for "Office 2008 slow" or something along those lines I'm sure the posts can be found.

Sorry that I can't help much more than that!

[sammich]

After using it for just a few hours, I was left with the impression that the MBU at Microsoft didn't exactly have huge resources at hand, even given the long delay they've had in releasing a UB version.

So many of the features from Office X/2004 are exactly as they were back then, the look of the UI, the window, dialog boxes. And for goodness sakes, the Equation Editor, the ClipArt Application, they are a serious PITA to use, they can't even load clips from the MS website.

All they did was import everything into Xcode 2, tweaked a bit here and there and added some eye candy (templates).

Honestly, I want my money back.

[ronwasserman]

Same problem here.

So after years of using Entourage I threw in the towel and switched to "Mail" which is very fast. Should have done this a few years ago.

Still using Office for Word and Excel when I have to.

Microsoft...I just don't understand that company.

[powerbook911]

Supposedly an update will come out in a week or so, and some of the bugs/speed will be fixed/improved.

[cmaurer]

Originally Posted by ronwasserman

Same problem here.

So after years of using Entourage I threw in the towel and switched to "Mail" which is very fast. Should have done this a few years ago.

Still using Office for Word and Excel when I have to.

Microsoft...I just don't understand that company.

Exactly. As a new Maconvert, I simply cannot how slowly it runs. Dude, I even get that window that says it has suffered an error and needs to shut down. I've bought (and use) iWork. Office- use only when I have to.