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Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

pcworld.com

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Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#11

Post by Retric »

dylan604 wrote: post #3
cebert wrote: post #2

For all the ESG virtue signaling that Microsoft does, you’d think they’d be concerned about the climate impact of this and why their applications are so inefficient.

There's an old quote about "why would I pay to have the code written more efficiently when processors are constantly getting faster and harddrives are constantly getting bigger?" that always comes to mind about MS software. I don't know the validity of that quote to be any more accurate than the 640k memory one, but it always just had the feel of authenticity by everything you see as circumstantial evidence

The underlying issue is MS software is running on customer machines so it’s not part of their bottom line. They have little incentive to care as long as it’s not so slow their monopoly breaks.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#12

Post by zamadatix »

rappatic wrote: post #6

Why on startup? Windows startup is already so painfully slow, especially compared to Apple silicon machines, and adding Office to it would only compound this problem. I think this problem can be avoided, while also still helping pre-load Office, if Windows just detects when resource utilization is low and loads Office in the background then.

> When Startup Boost is active, the scheduled task will not run immediately at login to avoid slowing down your PC — it will wait 10 minutes to ensure the system is in a steady idle state. Additionally, Startup Boost will be disabled when Energy Saver mode is active. Startup Boost only runs if you have launched Word recently, and if you have not launched Word recently it will automatically disable itself.

If you meet the hardware requirements threshold and recently have used Office then preloading it 10 minutes after login is extremely unlikely to impact your startup.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#13

Post by EGreg »

rappatic wrote: post #6

Why on startup? Windows startup is already so painfully slow, especially compared to Apple silicon machines, and adding Office to it would only compound this problem. I think this problem can be avoided, while also still helping pre-load Office, if Windows just detects when resource utilization is low and loads Office in the background then.

Windows Startup is slow, so Microsoft makes Windows start up silently in the background even when computer should be powered off.

Oh btw every joke has a grain of truth (sigh) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28712108

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#14

Post by NoPicklez »

rappatic wrote: post #6

Why on startup? Windows startup is already so painfully slow, especially compared to Apple silicon machines, and adding Office to it would only compound this problem. I think this problem can be avoided, while also still helping pre-load Office, if Windows just detects when resource utilization is low and loads Office in the background then.

I disagree, my Windows machine loads into the OS quicker from login than my Mac.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#15

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

marcodiego wrote: post #8

That's is not a new idea. I think Office 97 had an accelerated startup that made windows take a little longer the boot but faster the start office.

From memory, Office 97 had that dedicated Office shortcut bar on the desktop that it inherited from Office 95, but that was more of a proto-Quick-Launch-bar than a startup accelerator. Though because the bar necessarily needed to load some Office DLLs from disk I can see how that would have given Word/Excel/etc a modest startup boost.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#16

Post by naikrovek »

Fucken genius.

Fix the problem? No way, Jose; We’ll move the problem somewhere else.

I would like to know how we got to a place where any application taking more than 0.5 seconds to start is acceptable in any way.

I have text editors which have visible input lag, even to my untrained eye. How in the HELL does that even happen?

All of you hustlers out there making story cards and calculating velocity: stop doing this shit! Performance is fucking important.

“CPU is cheap” — fuck you it is. If your application takes more than 0.5 seconds to start on any computer than can run Windows 11, you are either doing something wrong, or you are relying on someone that is doing something wrong and you need to work around that thing even if it is dotnet.

Developer productivity is absolutely dwarfed by the aggregated productivity loss of your customer base. Application performance and customer productivity (think of these as “minimizing the amount of time the customer spends waiting on the computer”) are paramount. PARAMOUNT! — that means they’re one of the, if not the only, most important thing to consider when making decisions.

This world is going to shit so fecking fast

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#18

Post by _--__--__ »

I genuinely don't know if it was a bug or intentional behavior like TFA, but on the last win10 machine I used Edge would leave several of its background browser engine processes running indefinitely after the application was closed. Seems like they're just happy to let their users make unwitting sacrifices for their convenience of their devs.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#20

Post by coliveira »

ghurtado wrote: post #5

I'm more surprised that this is news than anything else. If you had asked me a minute ago, I could have sworn it's already a well known fact that they do this. They've been doing it since Windows 95 and explorer. At least.

Maybe they're only now making this public so people will believe that Office will start faster!
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