Why is Office:Mac 2008 so slow? All my other apps are "snappy", where as this is extremely bloated compared to office on my XP machine. Pretty does not = better.
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Office:Mac 2008 = slow
- Thread starter jfremani
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tersono
macrumors 68000
Doesn't surprise me - I haven't tried 2008 yet, but it seems that every new MS release is slower than the last. I don't know which version of Office you're using on XP, but my experiences of Office 2007 have been, shall we say, sluggardly on anything less than the latest hardware...
Are you running Office 2007 on your XP machine?
What feels slow in 2008? I was doing some general dicking around in it last night, and compared to 2004, it felt a lot quicker.
less that one second on a first start-up time?
as in, you log out, log in, and then click the icon and before it has bounced twice you have a document to type in? I doubt that very much.
if you have had an application open, and you have enough RAM, then quitting and re-opening the application will take a tiny fraction of the time it takes to open an app "from scratch" for the first time that session. Photoshop CS3 takes 30-40 seconds to load on my mac pro the first time, and if i quit and reopen, it takes about 3-4 seconds instead.
memory management.
less than 1 second for Word just doesn't sound accurate. Not for any version of Word.
as in, you log out, log in, and then click the icon and before it has bounced twice you have a document to type in? I doubt that very much.
if you have had an application open, and you have enough RAM, then quitting and re-opening the application will take a tiny fraction of the time it takes to open an app "from scratch" for the first time that session. Photoshop CS3 takes 30-40 seconds to load on my mac pro the first time, and if i quit and reopen, it takes about 3-4 seconds instead.
memory management.
less than 1 second for Word just doesn't sound accurate. Not for any version of Word.
Installation is pretty straight forward. I'm not the only one who has reported slow startup times. Once Office 2008 gets running, it is plenty quick. Just annoying that it takes so long to boot up, or whatever. Excel loads nearly instant on slower XP machines.
We had previously been using only XP for spreadsheets. We use Office 2003, but we had upgraded to Office 2007 at one point, only to find it was prettier, arranged different (old-timers hated it) and, for what we do, the bloat was not beneficial. We switched back to 2003, but honestly I could have gone either way on that decision.
Many of us use Macs now and thought Office 2008 would be the way to go. Ive used NeoOffice for some light spreadsheet work, on the road but obviously it lacks the data analysis tool packs.. wow, just like Office 2008.
We had previously been using only XP for spreadsheets. We use Office 2003, but we had upgraded to Office 2007 at one point, only to find it was prettier, arranged different (old-timers hated it) and, for what we do, the bloat was not beneficial. We switched back to 2003, but honestly I could have gone either way on that decision.
Many of us use Macs now and thought Office 2008 would be the way to go. Ive used NeoOffice for some light spreadsheet work, on the road but obviously it lacks the data analysis tool packs.. wow, just like Office 2008.
killerwhack
macrumors regular
Don't just whine, post the entire situation
Don't just say it is slow... that provides no benefit and no chance for helping. Post your machines parameters: RAM, CPU, other programs running at the time, OS version, etc.
Post as much factual information as you can! Post how many seconds it took. Post how long after login you launced the app.
We don't deny that it was slow for you but pls put other information. This is online.... not "onwhine" !!
Don't just say it is slow... that provides no benefit and no chance for helping. Post your machines parameters: RAM, CPU, other programs running at the time, OS version, etc.
Post as much factual information as you can! Post how many seconds it took. Post how long after login you launced the app.
We don't deny that it was slow for you but pls put other information. This is online.... not "onwhine" !!
xUKHCx
Administrator emeritus
Have you tried this version of word?
Well I tested it on my machine with an uptime of 2 days (and in those two days word was not loaded once) and it was about 1 second. Then I logged out and logged back in again and it was quicker than that. It really is fast.
With Excel I get start up times of about 1.5 seconds, Powerpoint 5 seconds.
BTW Photoshop CS3 takes about 15 seconds on my computer (MB with a 5400rpm drive), although I don't have many plugins installed to slow that down too much.
It was more of a complaint, than a tech support request. I could give you the specs of 8 various macs, I'm not sure what good it would do, as it is an observation of speed based on relative speeds of other softwares. Personally, I only use a 2ghz white macbook with 4gb ram and a 200GB 7200rpm hard drive. OSX 10.5.1, I check for updates every day. (Lame, I know) Bootcamp'd. Our IT guy is supposed to iron out the regressions issue with Microsoft sometime today. If that issue isn't resolved, then theres no point to any of this. (other than using Entourage, which works well so far)
hob
macrumors 68010
clevin
macrumors G3
I can understand, you need 1.5G~2G RAM to run office in leopard.
I know I need at least 1G to run office smoothly in Tiger.
Ok, let me ask this: I'm used to XP where installing and uninstalling applications causes eventual slowdowns and registry bloat. Is there any harm in removing Office:mac 2008 and then reinstalling again, over it? So far, these macs seem to be just as fast as when they were brand new, dispite all the new installs of apps.
Due to slow loading times, I had tried to trim down the install by sending some unneeded files and extras to appdelete, however the "uninstall" function was unintentionally deleted. Ofcourse, this made no difference in the speed of the Office apps. Shall I just put all the apps (excel, etc) in appdelete and then reinstall? I find it hard to believe that some people don't think it runs slow, compared to other programs. My Goodness. Powerpoint slides and a blank excel sheet should not take more than 1 or 2 seconds on modern systems. Much less, 6 to 10 seconds. Wow, that sounds knit-picky.
I guess I expected programs that do similar functions to run faster as computers got faster. Not slower.
Due to slow loading times, I had tried to trim down the install by sending some unneeded files and extras to appdelete, however the "uninstall" function was unintentionally deleted. Ofcourse, this made no difference in the speed of the Office apps. Shall I just put all the apps (excel, etc) in appdelete and then reinstall? I find it hard to believe that some people don't think it runs slow, compared to other programs. My Goodness. Powerpoint slides and a blank excel sheet should not take more than 1 or 2 seconds on modern systems. Much less, 6 to 10 seconds. Wow, that sounds knit-picky.
I guess I expected programs that do similar functions to run faster as computers got faster. Not slower.
I would have to say your 1GB of ram has something to do with it. Maybe your graphics card too, it was pretty slow and horrible in those old macbooks.
I dunno tho? Its smokin fast here. MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz / 4GB Ram / GeForce 8600M GT 256MB.
Underpowered? Let's consider that we are talking about an office suite. It's not Mathematica or Photoshop...
xUKHCx
Administrator emeritus
Agreed.
For reference the times given above were on a macbook (2.2GHz 2.5GB RAM 5400rpm) with 10.5.1
WhiteNoiseMaker
macrumors regular
I've got a White 2GHz Core Duo MacBook too, only mine has 2GB RAM and Office 2008 is fast on my machine. Its not 1 second fast though! I'd say it takes maybe 10 secs max to open first time. If I quit then reopen it opens in about 3 secs!
For reference, I consider 10 seconds slow. I can open Word 2007 on my Vista side and it opens in about 2 seconds. 10 seconds to open a simple program like a word processor or browser is a long time.
What about Office 2008 takes so much more memory to run than Office 2003? Office 2003 via XP on my macbook (bootcamp) opens Excel instantly. Literally instant. You click on it and bam it's open. Anyone else had problems with finding the regression tools, or does MS think we dont need them anymore? It's like it is set up for my grandma to use. Very pretty, though.
clevin
macrumors G3
1. you can not compare mac😱ffice and windows😱ffice
2. 2003 is very different than 2008.
3. all programs ask for more memory than 5 years ago, it is expected.
WhiteNoiseMaker
macrumors regular
OK here's some real timings not just guesses...
Excel 2008
Fresh open = 3.2 secs
Open after quit = 2.3 secs
Word 2008
Fresh open = 6.2 secs
Open after quit = 3.8 secs
Powerpoint 2008
Fresh open = 6.8 secs
Open after quit = 4.4 secs
Entourage 2008
Fresh open = 7.8 secs
Open after quit = 3.4 secs
(This is running on 10.5.1)
cubbie5150
macrumors 6502a
'08 is slow as **** on my MBP (see sig for details). Seriously, '04 opened faster than '08 now does.