Re: SLOW typing response time using Mac Office 2008

Hi:

Anything running on a PPC needs twice the memory of something running on
Intel, and as you have discovered, Wirth's Law remains in effect.

Wirth's law sates "Software gets slower at a greater rate than hardware gets
faster."

PPC software is built from a Reduced Instruction Set. The CPU instructions
are simpler (and thus faster to decode) but because they are simpler, you
need about twice as many of them to do the same job.

Which occupies twice the memory. Word 2008 runs very nicely in 2GB of
memory (WITH Safari and Skype and Adium and QuickTime and Entourage and
.....) all running here on a MacBook Intel.

Yes, OS 10.5 will slow your PowerBook down even more. Which is one reason
why I haven't installed it either. I'll go up in a couple of years when I
buy a new machine.

Cheers

On 21/01/08 4:45 AM, in article ee897ad.1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"MacDawg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <MacDawg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thank you for these suggestions, John. I believe it was mainly a memory issue,
but if you (or others reading this) want the details, here is what I did:

5. I rebooted to clear the RAM, and then I opened Activity Monitor. All
resources available. I opened Word 2008 and started typing in a new document
and noticed a marked improvement in the response time, including when I held
down the delete key to delete an entire word or sentence (something that was
sloooooow before despite my System Preference being set for the fastest key
response time).

But I usually have Safari 3.0.4 running in the background, usually with
multiple tabs/windows open. As soon as I opened Safari and a few sites,
Activity Monitor showed Safari hogging nearly all my RAM. Returning to Word
3008, the typing response time was slower, leading me to agree with your
suggestion that my problem might be memory related.

This leaves me with three complaints/concerns:

1. When did 2 GB of RAM become a de facto minimum requirement to run and use
two programs without a severe decline in program response time?

2. Safari 3.0 is a MUCH bigger drain on my system resources than was 2.0.

3. I am waiting to upgrade to Leopard after the significant 10.5.2 update is
released, but now I'm concerned that it may slow down my PowerBook even more.
I am planning to purchase a 24" iMac in the next 2 months, and though I want
to work with just one OS version, I am reluctant to slow down my PowerBook
even more.

Thank you again for your comments, John. They were very helpful.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx

.

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