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

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

#21
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.

The point of the virtue signaling is that it’s cheaper than actual virtue while retaining much of the same benefit. Practicing virtue signaling and not virtue is pretty natural.

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

#22

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.

Chrome would do that too unless the setting "Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed" is turned off.

https://superuser.com/questions/269385/why-does-google-chrom...

Now I never understood why the chrome.exe's would hang out when I didn't install any "background apps" - anyway I suspect a similar setting in Edge is buried in there somewhere.

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

#23
All I'm hearing is prefetch was put into new packaging and MS is calling it a new feature.

Management: Tweak prefetch and call it a new feature.

Dev1: Superfetch!

Dev2: We already did that.

Dev1: Superfetch for Office!

Management: Yes.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/all-right-gentlemen

https://windowsground.com/what-is-superfetch-windows-10-shou...

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

#24
post #4

I still can't believe how slow MS Word is to load a .docx document of about 150 pages of text, you can watch the page count in the status bar grow over a period of 10 seconds or more as it loads/paginates it. On the plus side, it's nostalgic and reminds me of the old MS Word 6 on Windows 95 (or Windows 3.1?) so that's nice.l

It's essentially a giant XML file, so it's not going to win awards for speed or efficiency.

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

#25

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…

Given that Office ran on my 486 and Word and Excel did everything back then that I still need them to do today, a slow startup time on modern hardware is ridiculous.

Office should be modular with a lean core and extensions for those who need them.

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

#26
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.

I'm actually not sure why so many people are saying it's slow.

For me login screen pops up maybe a few seconds from the bios, then everything is fully loaded after I enter my password.

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

#28

I've not had the greatest relationship with Apple software lately, however seeing every "great idea" that comes out of the Microsoft development team is quite possibly the only marketing Apple needs going forward.

You're not wrong, I don't know anyone that likes all these new features.

I wonder if it even matters though. Corporations are always going to use it, and the cheapest laptops will always come with it.

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

#29
This is one of the things that made people hate Vista. By default it was set to preload things into RAM in the background, gobbling up memory and potentially slowing the system down, both during the preload procedure and if you happened to want to run a program that the preload procedure didn't account for.

Windows 7 was so good because it was Vista without (much of) the bullshit.

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

#30
post #11
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My tinfoil hat told me that they're in cahoots with the big PC manufacturers, and use it as a part of planned obsolescence.
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