129 MS Word doc--should the MacBook be so slow?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m frustrated. I got my new MacBook, it was supposed to be fast, but it runs like a guy with an enlarged prostate trying to take a piss.

Anyhow, whether one uses Windows or Mac, a big MS Word doc typically. runs. real. fuckin’. slow.

Not predictably slow, mind you. Randomly slow. I open the doc, it’s going OK. Another time, not OK.

In 2006, is this the state of home computing. A 100+ page Word doc is going to cause the machine to groan and lurch? What the fuck!

2

I have a MacBook as well and I’ve noticed the same problem with Office, Creative Suite and Adobe Reader. If I’m using Safari, Mail, iTunes or iPhoto, it’s nice and fast. Once I load the non-Universal apps, though, things slow down, and I think it’s because I only have 512 MB of RAM in it. Did you stick with the standard RAM or did you buy more? It should probably have a least 1 gig in it to run smoothly. I’ve found 1 gig RAM sticks for less than $100 online and you can upgrade the RAM yourself.

That said, even when I run Word on my iMac G5, it runs slowly. It’s a big and bloated program.

3

Aeschines, you may already know this, but Office on the Mac is currently running somewhere between 50% to 80% slower than it would normally, because Microsoft has not released an Intel-native version yet. The version you have was compiled for the G5 processor, and you have an Intel, so Mac OS X has to emulate the G5 in order for Office to run at all.

The emulation takes a lot of system resources, which is why Office seems so slow.

When Microsoft releases their new version of Office, it will run much faster on the MacBook.

4

Thanks, I should look into a RAM upgrade. Apple gave me this comp for free when my iBook G4 died on me and they couldn’t source a part. That was nice of them, but I’m not pleased with the speed of the new machine.

5

Thanks, I didn’t know this. Good info.

6

Shit, an Aeschines Pit thread without batshit crazy rambling just doesn’t seem like an Aeschines Pit thread.

When come back bring batshit crazy.

7

Sounds like a fairly mild request for opinions to me. Off to IMHO.

8

http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

Try OpenOffice.org, it might be faster. It might not, but there is an OSX version of it, and it can handle Microsoft product documents.

9

Depending on your needs, AbiWord ( http://www.abisource.com/ ) could be a good choice: it’s compiled for Intel already and is quite a lot faster than Word ceteris paribus. If you use advanced Office techniques, however, it may not translate over so well.

10

Just to echo the other comments, if you’re running PowerPC applications on an Intel-based Mac, you need at least 1 meg of RAM for Rosetta to do its translating efficiently. 512MB is fine if you’re only running Intel applications.

11

Wow, Macs really are more efficient!

12

:smack:

Meg, gig – just throw another stick in there…

(In my day, we had 48K of RAM in our computers, and we liked it that way!)

13

Office is slow sometimes even on massively powerful systems. My buddy’s dual G5 with 2 gigs of RAM bogs down on it occasionally.

Also, OS X absolutely loves more RAM. When I maxed out my ancient PowerBook at 512, even compared to the 320 MB I had before it felt snappier. I’ve only got 512 in my G4 PowerBook and I really, really want to stick another gig in it. My browsing habits and power-user tendencies mean that with this level of RAM my virtual memory is running between 7 and 9 gigs on disk. Obviously with that level of disk swapping my computer sometimes runs like molasses.