[bluesloth]

I open MS Word, with just a black document open, and then hide it and it still uses 11% of my CPU time. Doing nothing!

I have all of the latest updates.

Is this usual? My other programs tend to behave when in the background.

I have a TiBook and I don't think this helps my batery life much.

[macmike42]

Yep, Microsoft Word is skitzy like that. Sometimes it does it, sometimes it doesn't. Luckily it launches fast.

[engaged]

Late 2001 iBook, 384Megs, latest Office X - and also 11%.

Chimera Navigator minimised uses about twice that, even when minimised, so 11% isn't too bad in comparison..?

[torifile]

Originally posted by engaged:
Late 2001 iBook, 384Megs, latest Office X - and also 11%.

Chimera Navigator minimised uses about twice that, even when minimised, so 11% isn't too bad in comparison..?

In comparison, no, but it's still WAY TOO MUCH for an idle program. Nearly all others use 0% when idle and that's how it should be. Word is now the only program I quit regularly. I hate it.

[SoClose]

I was corresponding with someone at Microsoft about this after Office v.X was released. Since Word (and the rest of the Office suite) are based on the old classic Mac OS event loop (called WaitNextEvent) and doesn't utilize Carbon Events (adoption of which allows Carbon and Cocoa apps to maximize processor time and minimize CPU waste). Since Word has to do so much during its main event loop, it seems unlikely that this would change any time soon. We might have to wait until Office 11 on the Mac before any of the core Office code is refactored to take advantage of the new event loop mechanisms in Mac OS X.

[nforcer]

Yeah, idle programs that are CPU hogs are really awful. For Carbon apps, it's all about the Carbon Events stuff that needs to be implemented properly, and only doing stuff when it needs to be done.

However, I have some hints that should help with your situation now. Based on some testing I did, I found that turning off Live Word Count, Check grammar as you type, and Check grammar with spelling preferences brought down idle CPU time from about 10% to 0-0.8% when MS word was hidden in the background. I believe those preference options are ones that fired by timers that run through a document checking for changes. Maybe it's just one of those that does that... I'm not really sure as I just suspected all of them might.

HTH!

[Catfish_Man]

The worst is Bryce 5. 85% CPU on a dual 867 to do nothing.

[car1son]

CPU percentage when everything is idle isn't really a meaningful figure. Your system is idle, Word is idle, Process Viewer is idle. The CPU is shared by the OS, Window Manager, Finder, Word, and Process Viewer, (and a few other things cluttering up the universe) each in turn deciding it has nothing to do. Word spends 11% of the processor decising it has nothing to do .

Now crank up some apps that need processor power (I wrote an infinite loop in AppleScript). Now that something is actually doing something, Word's percentage processor usage is now a fractional percentage, because the CPU has something else to do with its time between asking Word if there's something it needs to do.

[bluesloth]

It's a meaningful figure to me because it drains the battery. It's not that I need that extra 11%. Usually when I edit photos/images, I don't have apps like Word and Excel open. But at school I am always switching between the office apps and other productivity tools. I have to do a lot of reading on screen (such as pdfs). The whole time I'll reading, the battery is draining faster than it should. Quiting Word isn't a solution for me because I am always switching back to take notes and things.

I'm glad to know it's not my system that has the troubles. But then again, it would be nice because then I could fix it. It looks as though version 11 is the answer. Any gueses when that might be coming?