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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

#761

Post by crazygringo »

cosmotic wrote: post #69
everdrive wrote: post #44

Ah, the oldest trick in the book. Luckily, I'm sure that no on else will think to try this trick, and Windows will continue to load quickly.

My understanding is that Chrome has been doing this for years. ChatGPT agrees and links to https://ihaveapc.com/2024/10/understanding-chromes-continue-...

That Chrome feature has nothing to do with loading Chrome quickly.

On my Mac, I can't find any kind of launch item or background process. Chrome doesn't launch anything until I launch Chrome.

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

#762

Post by saratogacx »

bborud wrote: post #487
dimgl wrote: post #384

Windows is bafflingly bad. It's gotten so much worse in the last four years, but it's always been bad. I've never gotten bluetooth to work correctly on Windows. Apps randomly crash. Three different versions of settings pages, and they crash. Snipping Tool only works half the time. I had to run a debloater on my system because searching for something in the Start Menu would never give me the results I wanted. Xbox ads…

Most of what Microsoft does is indeed bafflingly bad. With a few exceptions. The baseline for software from Microsoft appears to be slow, bad UX and very buggy. And it isn't like this is some image thing; Microsoft products are always worse than I could remember when I'm confronted with them after some time away from them. Developers at Microsoft are obviously not rewarded for quality. You have to assume that this is…

> You would think that a company that has deep pockets would be in a great position to do more ground-up re-implementations. And to do so with quality, performance and correctness as the main focus.

Why is this always the go-to? The Windows 11 start menu and task bar are exactly that, from scratch re-implementations of what existed before and they are garbage. There is a lot of institutional knowledge in that old code and to pretend it holds no to little value gives us half-hearted replacements which never quite ascend to the heights they were supposed to replace.

Sure, there are some exceptions where the concept around "what the thing is" needed to change and a new product needs to re-imagine a solution (VS -> VSCode). However, I feel that we, the software development community, put way more hope that this is true way more often than it is in reality.

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

#763

Post by 7657364574 »

MisterTea wrote: post #555
barrkel wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here looking for this. It's an old idea, from the days when spinning rust was the limiting factor - precache the binaries. If you ever tried Office 97 on a PC of 10+ years later, it's amazing how fast and lightweight it was. Instant startup, super snappy. And those apps were not lacking in features. 95% of what you need out of a desktop word processor was in Word 97.

> from the days when spinning rust was the limiting factor How did we get back to this though? We have gigabytes/sec with NVMe and stupid fast CPU's with at least 4 cores in even low end models. Yet a text editor takes so long to load we need to load it up on boot... Such a frustrating field to work in.

My guess is that we're already seeing the consequences of "AI-assisted programming". Just yesterday, Microsoft's CEO revealed that 30% of their code is written by AI.

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

#764

Post by noisy_boy »

bflesch wrote: post #742
noisy_boy wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually View -> Toolbars -> Customize -> Notebookbar but within that there is only "Tabbed" option which doesn't really show a way to change themes. This is a perfect example of actions that make adoption harder. This should have been at most 2 clicks and prominently displayed assuming LibreOffice wants to be a great alternative to MS Office and make the transition easier. I have been using Linux daily for ove…

Nope, it's actually Menu -> User Interface: https://postimg.cc/sMhhFvC1 Then this dialog appears: https://postimg.cc/YhVWyQVJ

Found it - thanks! I wish this was more easily accessible to new users - it actually makes a difference in terms of organization of icons and ease of finding things.

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

#765

Post by Salgat »

afavour wrote: post #617
MisterTea wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the days when spinning rust was the limiting factor How did we get back to this though? We have gigabytes/sec with NVMe and stupid fast CPU's with at least 4 cores in even low end models. Yet a text editor takes so long to load we need to load it up on boot... Such a frustrating field to work in.

I know this is such a stereotypical "get off my lawn" statement but we've lost the art of software engineering. It's all about stuffing as many features in as quickly as we can and pushing it out to as many people as possible. Performance is always secondary. Not that I'm that nostalgic for the old days, we would have been doing the exact same thing if we were able to get away with it. But performance restrictions me…

It's a matter of resource allocation. Lowering your design requirements for performance can save significant developer cost. Also, Word in 2025 is doing a lot more under the hood than 97.

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

#766

Post by superconduct123 »

vjk800 wrote: post #192

I use Office software at work daily and I don't understand how that piece of shit can be so fucking slow. It's a serious productivity sink too; I often procrastinate small tasks just because I know half of the time doing it is spent waiting for various part of the office to load and that is somehow very stressful. I realise it is not a huge amount of time per se, but the psychological effect of the piece of crap stop…

Its because everyone is already locked in to use it

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

#767

Post by [deleted] »

ambicapter wrote: post #758
afavour wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is such a stereotypical "get off my lawn" statement but we've lost the art of software engineering. It's all about stuffing as many features in as quickly as we can and pushing it out to as many people as possible. Performance is always secondary. Not that I'm that nostalgic for the old days, we would have been doing the exact same thing if we were able to get away with it. But performance restrictions me…

I really don't think we've "lost it", I think performance has just not been a consideration in the engineering of Office for a long time, if ever.

[deleted]

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

#768

Post by horsawlarway »

WorldPeas wrote: post #608
horsawlarway wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just have it suspend to disk and shutdown on lid close. I do this for arch Linux on my framework and it's fine. Startup time is under ten seconds, essentially zero battery drain, right back in your session with all apps/docs open. Hibernate is definitely better but still finicky even on Mac/Windows, machines can and do fry themselves, or require a hard reset if you unplug a device at the wrong time. Or unexpectedly c…

the number 1 linux user accessory is the word "just"

A computer is a tool - learn to use it like a tool. People spend far more time learning to drive than they do learning to use computers these days, but I'd wager the computer matters more.

But too many companies have discovered that a docile "user" who's fed constant dopamine hits and has no actionable way to use a device other than open their wallet and fork over cash to watch more cats dance, or shop on more stores is exactly what they want.

Why don't you just click here and pay for Onedrive. Or just click there and accept Apple's new ridiculous terms.

If you just want to watch cats dance... you do you. I'll just keep doing me over here.

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

#769

Post by robotnikman »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #375
bigfatkitten wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to like GNOME, but GNOME's developers have almost as much arrogance and contempt for their users as Microsoft. As an example, the power button can no longer be configured to power off the machine, because this is "too destructive". I'm not talking about defaults -- they removed the ability for me to make this choice for myself. Not even Microsoft has done that. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id…

I've never been big on the Windows UI patterns but I recently started using KDE on one of my machines and it feels more polished than the Windows desktop. It has a few quirks but it's one of the most satisfying out-of-the-box desktops I've used, and I primarily use a niche dynamic tiling wm on all my other machines.

I started using KDE regularly after trying it out on the Steam Decks desktop mode. It works great! I had used it previously over a decade ago and was not impressed with it at first, but now it's my daily driver desktop enviornment.

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

#770

Post by rozab »

This is a fascinating contrast to Raymond Chen's recent blog post about adding seconds to the taskbar clock[0]. Apparently there is some energy efficiency team at Microsoft which in some cases is so strict it blocked this feature for decades. But at the same time... things like this are allowed to happen. Something about Conway's law perhaps?

[0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250421-00/?p=11...

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