Re: Slide Sorter: Mac vs Win Powerpoint

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

mgsite_at_comcast.net
Date: 02/09/05 

Date: 8 Feb 2005 17:25:27 -0800

An update for all involved...

I went to Macworld this last January and found one of the Office Mac
engineers at the Microsoft booth. I explained how painful it was for us
Powerpoint users who had to deal with the SLOW slide sorter redraw
problems. Among the things he said was:

- Yea, we know about that and it has to do with the fact that in PPT
2004 we shifted from using Quartz to using OpenGL per Apple's
guidelines moving forward. So screen drawing performance is now tied
more to the graphics card you have and how OpenGL is supported. So if
you have an older machine with an older graphics card, you might see
slower performance.

I asked him 'why can't you guys just cache the slides that haven't
changed?' I mean c'mon, if the slide hasn't changed you don't need to
redraw it now do you? Why make us wait for 30-60 slides to redraw in
sorter if they haven't changed. He replied that they were looking at
doing just that but hadn't got around to it.

I also explain that a 3 year old Dell laptop positively screams at
slide sorting comparied with the same age Mac. He said I should try the
same presentation on a newer machine with a better graphics card. This
might explain why some see this problem and others apparently don't.

I'm going to take my presentation into an Apple store on a iPOD Shuffle
and copy it to a powermac G5 and a Powerbook w/ 128mg of VRAM. I want
to see the difference to believe what he is telling me. But regardless,
the MacBU ought to really get on doing the following to PPT 2004:

- Fix the performance issues
- Get rid of poor screen updates when editing text
- ADD MOTION PATH EDITING!!!
- Save as SWF (Flash) please !!!!! This is needed for many web
presentation systems. .mov is not good enough.
- Slide preview tab in multipane view right next to Outline View.
- Easy way to launch full screen QT movie from slide and then return to
the slide presentation mid-stream.
- Option to auto convert all drag and drop images to PPT metafiles.
This will eliminate the cross platform issue of moving a mac file to
Windows only to find that you get those funky broken QT link icons for
'missing graphic'.
- Links to iLife content

If the MacBU can get those done then they'll really have redeemed
themselves. And by the way, how about adding Events to Entourage like
what's in Outlook 2003?

-m

hivekz wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>
> I run Office 2004 on a new iMac G5, so this can not be a proble. Also
> Virtual PC was running on the very same machine, and did much faster
> redraws on the very same machine. RAM is 1Gig. I really hope that
> MS+Apple will check these performance issues, especially that those
are
> related to only the latest version.
>
> Zoltan
>
> Jim Gordon MVP wrote:
> > Hi Zoltan,
> >
> > One of the things that Apple has done to speed things up in Mac OSX
> is
> > to turn over graphics processing to the video graphics card.
> >
> > Have you installed a graphics card that MacOS can use? I find that
on
> my
> > machine that the slide sorter view works very quickly.
> >
> > -Jim
> >
> > --
> > Jim Gordon
> > Mac MVP
> > MVP FAQ
> >
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;mvpfaqs>
> >
> >
> > hivekz wrote:
> > > Dear Jim,
> > >
> > > Powerpoint 2003 running on Virtual PC is much faster in slide
> sorter
> > > and slide redraws than the native Mac 2004 version! This is
simply
> > > unacceptable! I hope MS will speed it up by 3x-5x! With this
> speedup
> > > the Windows version will still be 2-4x faster than on a
comparable
> PC,
> > > but this is OK.
> > >
> > > Zoltan
> > >

Relevant Pages

  • Thank you Microsoft, but please fix the issues
    ... *screen redraws. ... a 60 page slide show on a 1ghz pb with 1gb of memory and it takes ... on mac os x with office 2004, and i interact with windows users with the ... ANY SUGGESTIONS FOR FIXING THE IMAGE HANDLING WOULD BE ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.powerpoint)
  • Re: Hyperlinks just stopped working
    ... I work for microsoft (tester for PowerPoint for Mac) and am ... are people just having problems with hyperlinks that go to ... I created a new ppt file and created a hyperlink ... to the next slide. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.powerpoint)
  • Re: Whered that go then ..?
    ... I did that the other day to a Virus .. ... *That's* why I don't want not need a Mac. ... ram, cpu, graphics card, retain all the other cards / drive / case / ... wrong outside warranty and me not being able to buy replacement parts ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: Progress?
    ... jpegs to display without any slow fade/transition (which it seemed ... the next slide, ... Sell Fridges staff noticed... ... are you able to suggest a Slide Viewing program for the Mac ...
    (comp.sys.acorn.advocacy)
  • Re: Printing Notes page to PDF
    ... so I won't have time tonight) ... The Version Which Is Yet To Come (MS has announced that VBA will be back in Mac ... view, the slide itself becomes a single graphic on the notes page in the PDF, ...
    (microsoft.public.powerpoint)