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im_noahselby · Nov 18, 2002, 05:54 AM

I'm fairly new to the program and have not used it in classic, but I am very curious as to whether others in this forum are pleased with it's performance?

I've used PageMaker 6.5 on a Pentium 3 based machine and never experienced any slowdown or choppiness. But on my imac 800, I find scrolling in this program alone, very slow and choppy...

Here are some areas I'd appreciate your input in:

1) How does it perform on a G3 based system in 10.2, say an ibook 800?
2) Does the ammount of ram you have affect window scrolling? I have 256 ram, but if InDesign 2.0 is the only program open, shouldn't that be enough?
3) Why is scrolling so slow and choppy on a G4 800 Mhz. Would I benefit from a 1 Ghz G4 Powerbook?
4) Do any of you find the program faster on a PC?

Thanks for your comments,

Noah

Mac Guru · Nov 18, 2002, 07:53 AM

1) I find it to be just fine on a G3 based system. I work with InDesign 2.0 on a daily basis on an iBook 500. I have never noticed any slow scrolling (might just be used to OS X

) in InDesign.

2) Not that I know of. Although as the saying goes, 'more RAM shouldn't hurt any'.

3) See 1

4) Nope, actually I find it to be worse on a PC, I had to spend about 4 months on ID 2 in Windows 2000 and it was HELL.

Mac Guru

im_noahselby · Nov 18, 2002, 03:21 PM

hmm, i wonder if it is an osx thing

It's still very usable, just sometimes a little bit annoying

Any more thoughts, anyone?

Thanks,

Noah

BrunoBruin · Nov 18, 2002, 10:23 PM

InDesign works well for me. I definitely noticed an improvement in performance when I upgraded my work machine from a dual 450 to one of the new dual 867s; that really sped things up. But performance is pretty good on my 667DVI PowerBook, too. The only things I wish were faster are initial startup and page turning. I'm working on a 200+ page book right now and there are some spreads with large EPS files that are very slow to load.

InDesign did feel slower than PageMaker when I first switched, but there are so many things it does so well I forgave it. Perfectly rendered EPS files, native Photoshop files, and the accurate preview of CMYK files... I used to have to create RGB copies of all my TIFF files so I could show color to clients. That alone has saved me a lot of time.

im_noahselby · Nov 18, 2002, 11:56 PM

BrunoBruin, does InDesign 2.0 take advatage of the dual processors? Or, does it use only one?

Noah

krove · Nov 19, 2002, 01:35 AM

InDesign is a page layout application, so I do not believe that it really does anything to warrant alti-vec acceleration or specialized dual-processor usage. But in the spirit of all OS X applications, it does have the ability to use dual processors (as do all OS X apps).

Some apps are specially written to take advantage of dual processors more efficiently, but as I said, a layout app is not exactly processor intensive (until of course you start working with really large files.

BrunoBruin · Nov 19, 2002, 02:17 PM

As Krove says, InDesign can take advantage of duals thanks to OS X. The system can offload tasks to both processors, unlike OS 9 which required apps to be multithreaded to use duals. So the system can dump your InDesign tasks to one processor while the other handles another set of tasks.

InDesign is probably a lot more processor-intensive than PageMaker, tho, since it has so many more things it can render, like transparency and editable drop shadows. I get a lot of activity in CPU monitor when turning pages.

Here's another plug: the very first job I did in InDesign had images with drop shadows, which previously were separate TIFF files created in Photoshop. With InDesign, I could create and edit the drop shadows on the fly, using the clipping paths on the images; you can even preview them while making adjustments. I really do love this app, just wish it were a little speedier.

clarkgoble · Nov 19, 2002, 07:00 PM

If it isn't multithreaded then the dual processors will simply be running background applications on the second processor. It won't speed up InDesign at all.

I'm not sure what one would need to multithread in the design, however one clear place where it makes sense is in paragraph updating and display. I know our company is writing a word processing library for various reasons and the programmer working on it multithreaded that. If Adobe didn't do that it is rather surprising. It would enable you to type, have the system update the text yet not drag down the UI.

godzookie2k · Nov 19, 2002, 07:43 PM

ID is a friggin dog on any system. It is still light years behind its OS7 competitor quark in performance. Set up a 10, 20?, 30??? page document and watch dragging drop to its knees. its quite pathetic. How people use it for anything more than a trifold boggles my mind. Yes, this applies to OS9 and OSX.

/me dons flame retardant suit.

im_noahselby · Nov 21, 2002, 05:08 AM

Interesting thoughts guys. I'm glad that its not just my computer

Noah

absmiths · Nov 21, 2002, 02:22 PM

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
If it isn't multithreaded then the dual processors will simply be running background applications on the second processor. It won't speed up InDesign at all.

I'm not sure what one would need to multithread in the design, however one clear place where it makes sense is in paragraph updating and display. I know our company is writing a word processing library for various reasons and the programmer working on it multithreaded that. If Adobe didn't do that it is rather surprising. It would enable you to type, have the system update the text yet not drag down the UI.

UI design is typically multithreaded. When it's not, people complain. In a graphics app like this especially there are limitiless possibilities for threading.

BrunoBruin · Nov 22, 2002, 10:34 PM

It is still light years behind its OS7 competitor quark in performance.

Only because Quark hasn't been updated since the System 7 days. But I hear that they're just about ready to ship a version that's optimized for that hot new 160MHz Motorola PowerPC chip.

martyrart · Nov 26, 2002, 10:11 PM

Hmm...I'm using InDesign 2.0 on what some people now consider to be a piddly 366 mhz Indigo iBook with OS X 10.1.5 and InDesign is just fine unless of course you do have a big file with lots of elements I suppose.

Don't worry, you know they'll release a patch like Illustrator to make it snappier.

Quark vs. InDesign? I would rather have a slow InDesign with all the nice extra features rather than Quark which crashes on a G4 and requires you to buy add on programs to get half the features InDesign does naturally!

InDesign has already gone beyond Quark at 2.0 so give it a few more installments and it will be truly complete and Quark will be the new PageMaker- aka the new "Business" layout program.