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Word 2004 slow as ever or is it just me?

Word 2004 is bugzilla

I find Word 2004 to be the most unstable microsoft program I have EVER used. I have to restart Word because of 'Application not Responding' at least every ten minutes.Iguess thats Micro$oft for you - maximum price/minumum effort. Currently waiting for the next patch (and probably a patch to patch that patch). :(
 
Does anybody know of any other application (besides Word 2004) that uses up to 50% of CPU cycles (on a 1.5Ghz PB) while doing nothing (all changes to the open document are changed and Word 2004 is hidden)??? :confused: EVERY other app (including the other Microsoft Office apps such as Excel and PowerPoint) are using 0 to 0.5% of CPU power at maximum under similar circumstances... :cool:
 
Mark James said:
Is anyone using Entourage 2004? Is it any quicker than before?
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I just picked up Office 2004 from our campus bookstore, and while Entourage does seem much faster and more responsive, it's taken a huge step back in my opinion. It now defaults to an awful-looking preview pane (which can be disabled thankfully). Even worse, however, is that it forces you to view your email not in a long list like Entourage X does, but instead under these headings labeled "Today", "Yesterday", "August 31st", etc. It wastes a good amount of space on the screen while adding nothing to my experience (I'm quicker just looking at the "Sent On" column as in Entourage X). I still haven't found a way to disable this setting either.
 
I just picked up a copy yesterday (also from the campus store). Word isn't the fastest app out there to say the least. However, it doesn't seem to be absolutely horrible.

Entourage on the other hand, I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish there.
 
I believe that the problem is not "Word-2004-is-slow" but rather its wasteful usage of CPU resources (even if no document at all is open and Word is hidden). How can this happen??? Has anybody an idea??? (the paranoids will probably spot Microsoft's strategy, which is to make the Mac platform unattractive...it only takes a small app that consumes all CPU power...) :rolleyes: :eek:
 
:mad:

Word uses 100% CPU while doing nothing...what is going on here???? :mad:

Is there ONE capable programmer at Microsoft??? I just can't believe it!
 
in my experience word v.X was good enough when the 1.5 upgrade was applied. i ran the test drive for a moment and instantly felt that the new version was too slow (compared to the v.X).

one would think that a 1.25GHz powerbook would have enough power to run a word processor ;) apparently not microsoft's new one...
 
Word & Excel 2004 are running smooth here on my 867Mhz G4 PowerBook (640MB RAM)

don't take long to load. (5 sec max) and work real smooth (even with the fading menu's and stuff)

Don't got any bad eXPerience with it :p
 
Works fine on a G3 iBook. Sad thing is that so many people bash Microsoft, most of it true, but they do have some redeeming qualities such as cheap software. My wife was able to get Office 2004 from her university for $8 due to a license agreement the school has with Microsoft.
 
On my 500 MHz Pismo 256 RAM, Word v.X starts up in 5 secs and isn't slow at all with Safari and iChat open at the same time.
 
Slow for me too

Yeah, I outtype Word X, of course on a G3 500 ibook. It's really frustrating. If they do update Appleworks, there is no doubt what my default word processor would be.

(and could it have something to do with RAM? I don't have much...)
 
Solution to Word 2004!?

tech4all said:
Doubt it. I have 1.5 GB ram on my G5 and am having similar issues with Word.
Click to expand...

You need to have 1.6 GB of memory. :p

I wonder why some people don't have the problem with speed even with lesser hardware. I did a search on Google and Microsoft support site for answers and didn't find anything conclusive.

Word on my G5 doesn't go over 5% CPU usage with a 21 page document. I use all the default settings and I have 1 GB of memory. I noticed a delay with graphics appearing as I scroll thru the document quickly. I tried to type as fast as I could by pressing keys at random in the middle of the document and it was able to keep up easily.

Could it be that famous 'permissions' problem on Mac OS X?
 
AmigoMac said:
Why the H*LL does word 2004 use ~10% of CPU if it has not been used since 4 hours ago... any idea?
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Its looking for other Office installs across your network (licence checking).
Thats why, even though your not doing anything, it is.

It takes 30+ percent of my CPU BTW.
 
Slowness maybe due to dual G5

I'm afraid the slowness may be related to specific hardware, like my dual G5 2GHz (1GB mem). On my humble G3 iBook 800 MHz+512MB the same Word is running fine.

In Word 2004 the slowness is amazing: Even in a tiny document, just changing the header style of 1 line from, say, header 1 to 2, takes about 2 seconds! :eek:

I have already checked my file permissions on OS X 10.3.5.
I have turned of background spelling checker: no difference.
Office was installed with the installer.

Although I don't like Microsoft and its products (XP service pack2 just trashed my PC), it may not be entirely to blame. I've noticed the same slowness in Macromedia Fireworks and Dreamweaver.
 
I'd like emphasize again: Word might be slow but more importantly it uses CPU power (at least 10% on my G4 1.5Ghz PowerBook) while doing nothing at all (regardless whether there is a doc open or not). This situation increasingly aggravates if the new balloon option to display changes is used: in this case Word will reproducibly (tested on differently configured PowerMacs as well iMacs) go up to 50-70% of CPU usage (regardless whether Word is activated or hidden to the dock)! Unplugging the network doesn't change anything (@Fukui). I do not want to bash Microsoft but Word has got a serious problem (I guess because they wanted to use as much code as possible from the Windows version...therefore the code hasn't been sufficiently adapted or optimised). As a comparison I've brought the new Nisus Writer Express 2.0, and funny enough Nisus Express with the same document as RTF uses at maximum 20% when actually used (scrolling through document for instance) but goes down to 0% immediately if there is no user-triggered action -- just as it should be!!!
 
Expedition said:
Unplugging the network doesn't change anything (@Fukui)
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Well, I'm not making an excuse for MS or anything! But, its possible word is just a piece of junk... a necessary peice of junk :)
 
well.... for me, the 2004 is quite a leap over the v. x.. Word 2004 finally uses 0% cpu when idle at the bkground. The typing is also fairly smooth as there are no delays wutsoever. 2004 is a must program for me, because it's the only program that supports native unicode, and without it, there is no way i can edit or type chinese documents. The compatibility report thing is also helpful, as v. x often create documents base on its own format, and not in the pc world's format. I use a 1ghz pbook with 768 ram, hope that helps.
 
well.... for me, the 2004 is quite a leap over the v. x.. Word 2004 finally uses 0% cpu when idle at the bkground
Click to expand...

...hmmm... how reproducible is that finding? 0% when idle? I don't want to take a poll here but it'll be interesting to hear from others whether Word 2004 can indeed use 0% of CPU cycles while doing nothing/idle? :)
 
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