Hi, I'm not sure if anyone else is as frustrated as I am (or if anyone else actually has a stock macbook 1.8Ghz: it seems like everyone has already upgraded to 2gb RAM but me) but I feel that Microsoft, on their 'Mactopia' website, are not totally honest about the performance of office 2004 under Rosetta.
I bought office with my iBook G4, on which it ran just fine, but when I returned my faulty (warped) iBook, and replaced it with a new Macbook, I have found office to run painfully, awfully, and ridiculously slow. The worst is when it runs a notification. The first thing you notice is that whatever program you were using at the time stops responding. Then a blank icon appears in the dock. A minute or so later you hear a very distorted chime, and after about 3 more minutes the notification finally shows itself. Not only does Office run slower than molasses under Rosetta, but it eats up all your RAM so that none of your programs work properly!
Users should not need 1GB of RAM to run an office suite!
I must say that switching from an iBook G4 (which I returned because it was warped and didn't sit flat) to a stock Macbook 1.8GHz has been a catch 22.
On the one hand, I can now run windows and mac os on the same computer. I also have a webcam, a widescreen aspect ratio, a 20GB bigger hard drive, and a supposedly faster proccessor.
The downside is that I also have a computer that runs like a Windows XP computer with 64MB RAM and a 300MHz processor. I mean it is sloooooow.
I can sometimes wait for up to a minute to load my widgets (it used to be instantaneous on my iBook), and I now spend large amounts of time watching a spinning beachball while I wait to finish typing a sentence (in fact I just had to wait about 20 seconds for that reason before I started that last sentence.) Add this to the fact that the £100 pound MS Office 2004 (student license) is basically useless and you have a rather annoyed and jaded Macbook owner (only recently converted to mac too).
I was trying to show my Windows-based brother in law how great mac os X is and lost his attention and seriously embarrassed myself while waiting for my computer to get out of a stall and load my widgets.
I'm hoping that by buying a GB more RAM (I can only afford 1 stick right now) that things will get better, but the thing is that I am poor and wasn't planning on shelling out an extra £100 on a laptop that already cost me £750.
When selling the Macbook 1.8GHz, Apple should either warn buyers that they are buying the computer equivalent of a Ford KA (a car slower than a Geo Metro for you non-Euros who've never seen the heinous contraption that is the KA), or else raise the price and put in what appears to be the minimum required about of RAM (+1GB)
I bought office with my iBook G4, on which it ran just fine, but when I returned my faulty (warped) iBook, and replaced it with a new Macbook, I have found office to run painfully, awfully, and ridiculously slow. The worst is when it runs a notification. The first thing you notice is that whatever program you were using at the time stops responding. Then a blank icon appears in the dock. A minute or so later you hear a very distorted chime, and after about 3 more minutes the notification finally shows itself. Not only does Office run slower than molasses under Rosetta, but it eats up all your RAM so that none of your programs work properly!
Users should not need 1GB of RAM to run an office suite!
I must say that switching from an iBook G4 (which I returned because it was warped and didn't sit flat) to a stock Macbook 1.8GHz has been a catch 22.
On the one hand, I can now run windows and mac os on the same computer. I also have a webcam, a widescreen aspect ratio, a 20GB bigger hard drive, and a supposedly faster proccessor.
The downside is that I also have a computer that runs like a Windows XP computer with 64MB RAM and a 300MHz processor. I mean it is sloooooow.
I can sometimes wait for up to a minute to load my widgets (it used to be instantaneous on my iBook), and I now spend large amounts of time watching a spinning beachball while I wait to finish typing a sentence (in fact I just had to wait about 20 seconds for that reason before I started that last sentence.) Add this to the fact that the £100 pound MS Office 2004 (student license) is basically useless and you have a rather annoyed and jaded Macbook owner (only recently converted to mac too).
I was trying to show my Windows-based brother in law how great mac os X is and lost his attention and seriously embarrassed myself while waiting for my computer to get out of a stall and load my widgets.
I'm hoping that by buying a GB more RAM (I can only afford 1 stick right now) that things will get better, but the thing is that I am poor and wasn't planning on shelling out an extra £100 on a laptop that already cost me £750.
When selling the Macbook 1.8GHz, Apple should either warn buyers that they are buying the computer equivalent of a Ford KA (a car slower than a Geo Metro for you non-Euros who've never seen the heinous contraption that is the KA), or else raise the price and put in what appears to be the minimum required about of RAM (+1GB)
