Does using Spaces slow down my Mac

[fjs08]

Does using Spaces slow down my Mac??

My wife has a new Vista box that is REALLY fast. My MBP is 2 yrs old, does have 2 GB vs her 3 GB RAM.

I bring up Excel and it's like there.... Now. My Mac takes about 30 seconds to load it on. I use Spaces, and open Safari, Mail and iCal upon starting. It's becoming annoying.

Any thoughts.

Thanks.

Frank

 

[Santa Rosa]

Spaces isnt doing it. What version of office are you using? 2008 is not that quick to open up even on my year old decked MBP but a recent update helped that a little bit.

Wait until your wifes Vista machine isnt new, patience is a virtue, just saying is all

 

[fjs08]

>>Spaces isnt doing it. What version of office are you using? 2008 is not that quick to open up even on my year old decked MBP but a recent update helped that a little bit.<<

It's the new one.

>>Wait until your wifes Vista machine isnt new, <<

ROFL. Thanks.

Frank

 

[GGJstudios]

I agree. Spaces isn't slowing you down. Microsoft Office is slower than most Mac apps... slower than most Windows apps, too. I have Office 2008 and it takes my system about 6-7 seconds to fully launch Excel from the time I click the icon. Not terrible, but still much slower than other apps.

 

[darkcurse]

Office has never been fast. The previous version was "slow" because it was running on Rosetta, and the current one... I don't know. It still takes so long to load. So much so, that I've set it to open at startup and I just close the window so its there instantly!

 

[fjs08]

>>Office has never been fast. The previous version was "slow" because it was running on Rosetta, and the current one... I don't know. It still takes so long to load. So much so, that I've set it to open at startup and I just close the window so its there instantly!<<

I've tried that too. And using Google Docs, but that doesn't suit my needs.

Thanks.

Frank

 

[eXan]

Does using Spaces slow down my Mac??

My wife has a new Vista box that is REALLY fast. My MBP is 2 yrs old, does have 2 GB vs her 3 GB RAM.

I bring up Excel and it's like there.... Now. My Mac takes about 30 seconds to load it on. I use Spaces, and open Safari, Mail and iCal upon starting. It's becoming annoying.

Any thoughts.

Thanks.

Frank

Try to open iTunes on her PC and your MBP

 

[fjs08]

>>Try to open iTunes on her PC and your MBP<<

I've actually left her iTunes on her old dying ThinkPad. Thankfully, she RARELY adds new music. Guess nothing new comes out from MaltShop Memories <bg>

Frank

 

[messedkid]

>>Try to open iTunes on her PC and your MBP<<

I've actually left her iTunes on her old dying ThinkPad. Thankfully, she RARELY adds new music. Guess nothing new comes out from MaltShop Memories <bg>

Frank

Not trying to sound like a jerk, but theres a little button at the bottom of every post, labelled "Quote".

No need to quote everything yourself using >>roflpwn't<<.



Cheers

 

[r0k]

At work, we downgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2007. What a mistake. Loading any document takes 15-20 seconds and often longer. Of course, loading the second and subsequent documents takes less time but quite often I've got somebody at my desk or on the phone asking a question and I have to sit there like a deer in the headlights waiting for Office 2007 to get it's head out of it's derriere.

I do notice that NeoOffice doesn't launch very fast on my Macbook but I bet it's faster than either Office 2004 or Office 2008 would be. I also use iWork. It launches fairly quickly but sometimes doesn't open the documents from work as accurately as NeoOffice. Often we have spreadsheets with dozens of columns and thousands of rows repeated across a dozen tabs. I don't have to open that stuff very often on my Mac, but when I do, NeoOffice does slightly better than iWork which is why I keep it around despite its relatively slow load time. Also NeoOffice opens and saves Office formatted docs natively. No "export" dialogs to look at. Save is simply save.

I was getting close to buying MS office 2008. My wife wanted it. My kids were asking for it. I hesitated because it's limited to 3 installs. iWork family pack allows 5 installs. NeoOffice is free. Then we got Office 2007 at work and I saw what a dawg that thing had become and I resolved to never send another penny to M$ until or unless they stop the bloat.

BTW... I don't think Spaces slows anything down. The only slowdown might be related to having too much stuff open at one time. You can use activity monitor to see what process are using your cpu. I doubt spaces will make it out of the bottom 10.

 

[Saladinos]

Office is a pig. Try using iWork, it's much faster, although less feature-filled (especially Numbers, which was just introduced in '08).

I use it over Office. Pages isn't lacking anything major, and Keynote is actually better than PowerPoint.

 

[fjs08]

I won't quote anything here so the Quote Police don't scold me again!!!!!!!!

ANYWAY, I tried iWork and really didn't like it.

Office 2008 is a bit better with some upgrades, I guess, but for awhile, I had a huge problem with Word crashing... over and over again. A bit of a pain. I used to use Entourage, which I liked, but I don't know if the mail program, calendar and contacts would sync easily or at all with my iPhone, so I use Safari, OSX Mail, and iCal which I'm very satisfied with too.

At least Excel and Word files will transfer from OSX to Vista.

Thanks.

Unquotable Frank

 

[mobilehaathi]

I'm under the impression that Office actually does a substantial amount of "preloading" as the PC boots and keeps it in the background for when the user needs it. Thus, one gets the impression of a very fast and snappy launch on the PC vs Mac.

 

[r0k]

I won't quote anything here so the Quote Police don't scold me again!!!!!!!!

ANYWAY, I tried iWork and really didn't like it.

Office 2008 is a bit better with some upgrades, I guess, but for awhile, I had a huge problem with Word crashing... over and over again. A bit of a pain. I used to use Entourage, which I liked, but I don't know if the mail program, calendar and contacts would sync easily or at all with my iPhone, so I use Safari, OSX Mail, and iCal which I'm very satisfied with too.

At least Excel and Word files will transfer from OSX to Vista.

Thanks.

Unquotable Frank

>> Unquotable Frank << Never let criticism make you avoid doing something in a forum. You have every bit as much a right to use >>for quotes<< as anyone else has to use

for quotes

.

I must admit that iWork is not quite up to all of MS Office capabilities in some areas. I find that I can do without those capabilities. Did you find the inspector in iWork? A lot of the formatting options that clutter up menus in Office are in the inspector in iWork. When you're trying to find a way to do superscripts or some other formatting, pop up the inspector and you will find that almost, if not quite all of the formatting options you would have in Word are available in Pages. If I had to rank iWork vs Office, I would say Keynote is a lot better than Powerpoint, Pages is just about equal to Word, and Numbers is not quite as good as Excel.

BTW, on any PC I use, I turn off Office "preloading" as it eats system resources all day long and doesn't help load times that much.

 

[fjs08]

>>Did you find the inspector in iWork? <<

Humm. No. I'll have to look for that.

>>BTW, on any PC I use, I turn off Office "preloading" <<

How do you do that?
Is it a registry thing or from within Office itself??

Thanks.

Frank

 

[HLdan]

Yes, it's true, MS sets Vista and their own apps to preload during bootup. It gives the impression that you have a really fast PC. It's a nice parlor trick and very effective but it comes at the expense of memory getting reserved for this. As time goes by your wife's Vista PC will begin to slow down due to the Registry getting clogged as usual. Any brand new Windows computer will run like a breath of fresh air but only for a short time.

Microsoft has purposely dumbed down the Mac version and received a lot of flack for how slow Office 2008 was loading and the latest update has addressed the complaints. It's actually a decent Office suite but the Windows version is still better unfortunately. Don't be fooled thinking your wife's Vista machine is faster than your Mac. Try some 3rd party applications on both systems and see the difference.

 

[GGJstudios]

I'm under the impression that Office actually does a substantial amount of "preloading" as the PC boots and keeps it in the background for when the user needs it.

BTW, on any PC I use, I turn off Office "preloading" as it eats system resources all day long and doesn't help load times that much.

How do you do that?
Is it a registry thing or from within Office itself??

Yes, it's true, MS sets Vista and their own apps to preload during bootup.

Things may have changed with Vista (I escaped to the safety of Mac OS X before prolonged exposure!), but historically, Windows has a "feature" to make programs launch faster. When you install programs on Windows, you'll notice some have an option that's usually checked to "Add a shortcut to the Quick Launch Toolbar" (QLT).

The QLT is located on the Start Bar. If a program is included in the Quick Launch toolbar, a portion of that program is loaded into memory, whether you actually launch the program or not. This improves the launch time when you do decide to run the program. However, if you're short on RAM and your system is already slow, removing items from the QLT will improve boot-up time and overall system performance.

In my experience, the slightly faster launch time for individual programs isn't enough to justify the drag on overall performance. To disable the QLT, delete all the shortcuts from the QLT and then de-select the QLT. If you like the convenience of launching programs from that toolbar, you can create a custom toolbar and add any programs to it you like. The difference is, none of the programs on your custom toolbar will be loaded into memory prior to launching.

 

[fjs08]

>>If a program is included in the Quick Launch toolbar, a portion of that program is loaded into memory, whether you actually launch the program or not. <<

Never knew that. Is that just Microsoft programs like Excel and Word or say Google's Picaso photo program.

Does the same hold for "quick starts" in the lower left tray on Vista.

Frank

 

[GGJstudios]

>>If a program is included in the Quick Launch toolbar, a portion of that program is loaded into memory, whether you actually launch the program or not. <<

Never knew that. Is that just Microsoft programs like Excel and Word or say Google's Picaso photo program.

Does the same hold for "quick starts" in the lower left tray on Vista.

Frank

It's true for any program listed in the Quick Launch Toolbar, whether the program is a Microsoft product or not. I assume the Quick Starts in Vista is the same thing.

 

[r0k]

Things may have changed with Vista (I escaped to the safety of Mac OS X before prolonged exposure!), but historically, Windows has a "feature" to make programs launch faster. When you install programs on Windows, you'll notice some have an option that's usually checked to "Add a shortcut to the Quick Launch Toolbar" (QLT).

The QLT is located on the Start Bar. If a program is included in the Quick Launch toolbar, a portion of that program is loaded into memory, whether you actually launch the program or not. This improves the launch time when you do decide to run the program. However, if you're short on RAM and your system is already slow, removing items from the QLT will improve boot-up time and overall system performance.

In my experience, the slightly faster launch time for individual programs isn't enough to justify the drag on overall performance. To disable the QLT, delete all the shortcuts from the QLT and then de-select the QLT. If you like the convenience of launching programs from that toolbar, you can create a custom toolbar and add any programs to it you like. The difference is, none of the programs on your custom toolbar will be loaded into memory prior to launching.

>>If a program is included in the Quick Launch toolbar, a portion of that program is loaded into memory, whether you actually launch the program or not. <<

Never knew that. Is that just Microsoft programs like Excel and Word or say Google's Picaso photo program.

Does the same hold for "quick starts" in the lower left tray on Vista.

Frank

Sorry, ggjstudios, you are giving M$ credit for a feature that does not exist. Having an icon in the "quick launch toolbar" is nothing more than an icon. The software to preload an application is a separate issue. For instance, shortcuts to excel, word, etc can be sitting in your "quick launch toolbar" but the software that actually gets office "pre-loaded" is called osa.exe. If you don't see osa.exe in your task manager, you don't have office "pre loaded".

Try this... Start a program using its shortcut in the start menu. (reboot and then) Start it again using the quick launch toolbar. The load times should be nearly identical whether you run the program from the start menu, quick launch toolbar, browse to "program files" and double-click the exe or launch the exe from a cmd window. None of the code is sitting in memory. It all has to be loaded for the program to run regardless of how you start it (unless you ran a separate application at boot time to "pre-load" the application you intend to use - and putting a shortcut in quick launch does NOT pre-load anything).

Our IT people have put lotus notes in our "quick launch toolbar". Notes still takes a good 90 seconds to get itself unraveled and ready to do anything but waste 80 percent of the screen with a modal foreground dialog box. Quick launch is nothing more than a bucket of shortcuts.

 

[GGJstudios]

Sorry, ggjstudios, you are giving M$ credit for a feature that does not exist. Having an icon in the "quick launch toolbar" is nothing more than an icon. .....Quick launch is nothing more than a bucket of shortcuts.

According to Senior Tech Support specialists (not the first line support personnel who you get when you have a technical problem, but the ones that issues get escalated to when they're too complex) at Microsoft, that's not true. I spent hours on the phone with them, discussing performance tweaks and undocumented functions of Windows. I have nothing to prove and no need to argue with you about it. Call them and find out for yourself.