[Colonel Panic]

(Machine: PB 667. 512MB)
Office v.X seems to perform pretty well for the most part. The largest exception is, not surprisingly, scrolling. The same doc that could be scrolled through under Word 2001 in Classic in 30 seconds took 45 seconds under Word X with no other load on the machine, and about 60 seconds with the system simultaneously grabbing a web page in Explorer.

Text entry in Word X seems a little sluggish as well. Anyone else notice that? Sometimes it seems it's having some issues keeping up with me, and trust me, my typing sucks. Any touch typists have an opinion on how responsive Word X is?

Excel seems to be particularly nice after some use. Scrolling, of course, isn't great, and for some reason they chose not to use sheets in Excel, but overall a big thumbs up for excel. I love the clarity in text entering (the raised cell thing).

[dtc]

I found searching text in Entourage X to be quite a bit faster

[jguidroz]

I have yet to use excel, powerpoint, or entourage from office v.X, but word is a fricken resource hog. I mean my whole computer just slows down to a crawl. I'll have to upgrade my ram just to hope this speeds it up.

[Eug]

Word seems a bit slow. Yes, a few times I've noticed the typing was laggy.

Powerpoint is slightly slower than the PC version, but MUCH faster with some stuff than the previous OS 9 Mac version.

[Neilwhit]

Just made the upgrade. If Entourage is the front/active app, I'm seeing 60-85% cpu usage by Entourage (and 100% overall as a result). When it's not the active app (in background), the usage drops down to somewhat normal/acceptable levels.

Anyone else seeing this? Reminds me of the MYOB OSX demo that stole all the cpu until they fixed it. I don't suppose anyone has found a Microsoft Feedback mechanism like the Apple OSX Feedback?

Thought I'd try it on my home G3 B&W. Same thing. 85-88% CPU grab when Entourage is in front.

Interestingly, it didn't do it right away (this time I watched). But then all of a sudden it grabs 88% cpu. Here's something even odder. When you click on a menu bar menu (top menu bar), the cpu usage drops to almost nothing for Entourage. As sonn as you let go of the menu, the cpu usage jumps back up to 80-88%.

If I open up an appointment window (to schefdule a calender event), the cpu jumps to 90-92% for Entourage.

Would appear if you have Entourage in the front, your pretty well screwed as far as background apps and process go.

Just tried Word and Excel X for cpu, and neither grabs cpu like Entourage. Word was only about 30-35% while Excel was less.

[squiggy]

Originally posted by Neilwhit:
<STRONG>Just made the upgrade. If Entourage is the front/active app, I'm seeing 60-85% cpu usage by Entourage (and 100% overall as a result). When it's not the active app (in background), the usage drops down to somewhat normal/acceptable levels.
</STRONG>

I don't have the final version yet, but I'm not seeing anything like that in terms of percentage in top. More like 10% or so (though the PID just says Microsoft on mine).

<STRONG>

If I open up an appointment window (to schefdule a calender event), the cpu jumps to 90-92% for Entourage.

Would appear if you have Entourage in the front, your pretty well screwed as far as background apps and process go.

Just tried Word and Excel X for cpu, and neither grabs cpu like Entourage. Word was only about 30-35% while Excel was less.</STRONG>

Maybe it's Office Notifications (which I have turned off) or something like that. It's pretty lightweight on my system (G4/533).

As for Word being slow, I've noticed that while general functions seem faster (search / replace, formatting) scrolling and displaying dialogs and the like is slower. I'd blame this on Quartz and the lack of graphics acceleration, but we all know MS is the evil empire and whatnot, so it couldn't possibly be Apple letting us down here.

[fulmer]

I have notifications on. Word, Entourage, Explorer, Quicktime Player, System Prefs open. Entourage is the front app. Nothing uses over 3.5% CPU and hardly any memory.

I have a PowerBook 667/512 MB RAM/48G HD.

The Office apps are nice and I'm really liking them.

[Brazuca]

Word is also laggy for my typing, which is why I'm back in OS9 to get some work done. Definetelly not a memory issue as I have plenty.

Entourage is fine, but the GUI is a bit sluggish. Maybe this is cuz of Apple though.

Haven't tried Excel yet, but it better have ended with some significant bugs that I've found.

I'll check and post more later

[Neilwhit]

Re: The Entourage CPU hogging problem

VERY INTERESTING! I switched to a new identity with no schedules or accounts etc. CPU usage dropped to lower levels.

I then switched back to my main identity and the cpu usage is now running fairly normal. Strange in that I have rebooted the computer, restarted various things, etc., all with no effect on the massive cpu usage I was seeing in Entourage.

I had, of course, done a massive import of accounts, addresses, mail etc. in setup. Seems that for some strange reason creating a new identity, then switching back cleared something.

I'll keep watching to see if the effect sticks, and try it at home tonite. If it stays, I'm happy!

[Neilwhit]

Originally posted by Neilwhit:
<STRONG>Re: The Entourage CPU hogging problem

</STRONG>

Yeah, worked on the home G3 B&W also. Had to switch to a new identity, then switch back to the original main identity. Then the cpu usage dropped back down to normal. Pretty strange that it happened on 2 completely different machines exactly the same way.

At least it was a simple fix!

[Neilwhit]

Update:

The problem is back with Entourage consuming too much cpu. Both of my machines are doing the same thing. Leave Entourage running for a while, and when it's the front app, there goes all the CPU. Bring another app forward and the cpu usage drops.

Mine only check email every 10 minutes on the one and every 30 on the other, so in the meantime there shouldn't be much cpu demand. But what is happening results in 100% cpu usage (not all Entourage, obviously). Entourage shows about 80-85% cpu usage.

If you quit Entourage and restart it, it goes back to a fairly normal cpu usgae for a while.

[tobster]

I am also experiencing this thing with Word being slow at typing. Bugs me a lot since I need to use a WP most of the time and am a pretty fast typer. I also have problems with letters like �, �, �, � and � (all the ones with the thing on top). I'm Icelandic and these letters are often used so I need them. All in all the only app i'm happy with is Excel... I might be blinded by major flaws in the other progs though.

PowerPoint - issue with special Icelandic characters such as �, �, �
Word - slow typing, especially with �, � and so on
Entourage - when my system is localized and I try to send mail, can't use it because I don't have the localization then
MSN explorer - crashes a lot, slows down other progs when waiting for your attention (jumping icon)

Excel... no complaints.. .best spreadsheet prog I've used for years... Kudos to M$ for this ...

Oh well... I get the suite for cheap through my school anyways...

cheers, tobs

oh, by the way.. this happens on both of my computers...

[Colonel Panic]

I agree with Tobster. Typing in Word feels like it should be, oh, 654x faster than it is currently.

All the apps could use a speed boost, but the big winner of the bunch, to me, is Excel. Slow recalcs only hit huge spreadsheets. In Word, you deal with slow typing all the time - very annoying.

[brae]

Me too, finding Word X way slow. Working in a table & it's painful ... have to frequently pause for a couple of SECONDS for Word to reassemble the table. Can't yet tell what triggers this, sometimes it happens when I'm editing text; it happens when I show/hide paragraph marks.

Anything I can do about this?

[Ozmodiar]

My experience with Office v.X (on a TiBook 400, 384mb):

Word
My only problem with Word is that I can't use equation editor. I need to insert equations into my documents for lab reports, but every time equation editor starts up it immediately crashes. I think I just need to reinstall Office.

Excel
Works exacly the same in v.X that it did in 2001 and any windoze version I've ever used.

PowerPoint
PowerPoint is great, although the one and only time OS X has ever crashed on me is when working on a huge slideshow in PPT. Luckily it saves itself for autorecovery very often, or else I would have pretty upset.

I've never used Entourage and probably never will.

All in all a good suite.

[Brazuca]

Originally posted by Colonel Panic:
<STRONG>I agree with Tobster. Typing in Word feels like it should be, oh, 654x faster than it is currently.

All the apps could use a speed boost, but the big winner of the bunch, to me, is Excel. Slow recalcs only hit huge spreadsheets. In Word, you deal with slow typing all the time - very annoying.</STRONG>

Yeah, I can live with Excel, but just barely. I hate how sluggish everything seems. I can put up with it for the first couple of hours, but then I just scream.

And don't get me started with Word. The molasses-like gui and the horrible Equation Editor has pushed me to learn TeX. The best thing I've done!

If you need to write equations in a document, forget Word. Get a copy of TeXShop (free), Equation Service (free), do a google search for a quick tutorial (free), and you'll have the best equations on the block.

Took me one night from when I learned about the existence of TeX to transferring my proposal to it and having better success than with Word. ONE NIGHT!

[Richard Harrison]

Hi,

The best thing you can do to speed up Word is turn off the live word count option (in the general prefs I think). Doing this reduces the CPU usage massively, and makes word just about usable. You should also turn off the check spelling and grammar as you type options. This solved most of the slow typing problems for me, although it is still not a patch on Word 2001.

Cheers


Rich