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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

#971

Post by CrimsonCape »

SoftTalker wrote: post #708
Illotus wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ribbon was better for most people who didn't have all the shortcuts in muscle memory. It is much more discoverable.

I find its discoverability is terrible. I am always hunting for what I want to do and it's never anywhere that seems to me to be sensible. I usually end up doing a google search for what I want. Perusing the ribbon takes me much more time than just looking at the various options under the old style menus. Also traditional menus had some traditional standards. Once you learned what was under "File" or "View" or "Inser…

Logically, users have to learn the name of the tool before performing any sort of geographical associations (which menu, symbol, etc to find the tool).

There is no faster discoverability than O(log(N)) search using the letters of the name as a lookup.

The biggest failure of modern operating systems is failing to standardize this innate reality.

Windows,Linux,etc should have 1. keyboard button to jump to search box 2. type 1-2 letters and hit enter. Operating systems and applications should all have this kind of interface.

The most ironic apps have a ribbon named something like "Edit" but then the most used "edit" command lives in an unrelated ribbon.

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

#972

Post by CrimsonCape »

floathub wrote: post #484
brobdingnagians wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am genuinely confused why search is so bad in the major email webapps/clients. Search is a well studied feature, and it seems like it's something that should just work but I can never find the thing I'm searching for in my email (especially O365). Knowing the date and then scrolling often seems to be the most accurate way of finding things...

The answer, as always is Emacs :-) With mu4e (an Emacs package), you can have lightning fast searching across multiple mail accounts. And with a bit of work ( https://stuff.sigvaldason.com/email.html ) it will happily interoperate with Microsoft Exchange systems that require the OATH2 dance.

Haha, I love your reply because it brings up auth. You can't do the slightest search or action without first pinging a web server with an auth token. Yet another source of wasting milliseconds.

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

#973

Post by ajolly »

QuicklyNow wrote: post #574
kyrra wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like fast apps, maybe check out FilePilot, a Windows explorer alternative. https://filepilot.tech/ It's amazingly fast, though it's missing some features and will be really expensive when it leaves beta.

I made an account to thank you for this. I've been looking for a _fast_ alternative to explorer since Windows XP. But one that doesn't require a change in workflow. This is the fastest I've tried by far. I've only been using it for 5 minutes, but I'm sold. Earlybird discount too! Thank you for posting this, and if you have any other speedy apps you'd recommend I'd welcome suggestions. Mine top suggestions are Speedcr…

Listary has slowed down tremendously ever since they included search. For a launcher I'm still using "find as run robot", which truly is a 90s era piece of softer but works blazingly fast. I do have a plug-in to tie it into search everything.

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

#974

Post by ajolly »

benjiro wrote: post #877
josephernest wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use Office 2007 on my computer. Super super snappy, I think Word or Excel starts and finishes loading in 0.5 second after clicking the icon. It has 99% of the features I need compared to the newest Office version.

Same ... Office 2007 for the win. Frankly, i do not even use 90% of Office 2007 feature, so why do i even need more? For AI ... no. And funny thing, barely uses any memory! Makes todays apps look like monsters. Even my music player uses 5x more memory while paused, then freaking Excel with multiple pages open.

Do you have a good way to run multiple versions of office? I do sometimes need some of the newer features but I'd like to default to using the older versions.

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

#975

Post by const_cast »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #948
const_cast wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using KDE for a good decade or so, and what a lot of people don't know is that not only is the desktop great, the applications are, too. Everyone knows Dolphin is by far the best file manager, but not a lot of people know that Kate is fantastic. Konsole is really good too. The new System Monitor basically replaces a ton of programs. Spectacle is a great and snappy screenshot utility. Filelight is so useful.…

> The new System Monitor basically replaces a ton of programs. Like what? Running htop or btop++ in Konsole(or whichever terminal emulator you prefer), as I do?¹ :) Just opened that thing right now, and it gives nothing to me. Shrug? ¹ On one of 9 virtual desktops, arranged 3x3, usually upper left. https://postimg.cc/K35Qv6Pg https://postimg.cc/0zGttJMC https://postimg.cc/pyTLRfPp < Itsatrap!

System monitor can do all this stuff, pstree and all, and you can get really cool visualizations. Pi charts, line graphs, and my personal favorite, color grid. That one's really good for CPU utilization.

But the real icing is that it doesn't just work for processes, applications, CPU usage and whatnot. It works for any sensor, including temperature and fans. And, of course, it's all customizable.

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

#977

Post by ZunarJ5 »

mrandish wrote: post #76
cosmotic wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At installation Chrome, Edge browser and Acrobat Reader all silently add multiple background tasks to Windows startup which will then run at every boot and log on. Those tasks check for updates, pre-load and ensure their usage analytics get dutifully reported. Because I only use those apps on rare occasion, I go remove all those tasks. And each of those apps checks to see if its tasks are still there on every run or…

Use FOSS alternatives.

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

#978

Post by buovjaga »

amiga386 wrote: post #379
alliao wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some of the modern software is slower because someone made a poor decision to fetch something from the network on the critical path of main functionality... kills me

Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/upf8nw/fixed_o... Opening a spreadsheet, even if you don't want to print it, will hang for 30 seconds doing nothing, because LibreOffice will load the printer settings for the document, which means asking the printer, which if the printer is network-based and turned off, means a 30 second wait for a timeout. Reported in 2011, still not fixed: https://bugs.documen…

> Reported in 2011, still not fixed: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42673

Perhaps spurred by this comment, there was new discussion in the report and it turned out Microsoft has fixed the issue in Windows 11: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42673#c8...

Quote:

"I was one of the many who reported this problem in one from or another. The problem is Windows-specific. I have found out that the problem actually comes from the Windows print system. There is no way to check that a printer is actually active or working or even present without incurring a long time-out in case the printer is not present or powered. Trying to check the defualt printer will incur the same time-out.

Calc apparently wants to check the printer to know how to construct its layout, and has to wait for the time-out to continue.

Some of the comments that claim that Calc hangs and never returns have probably not waited long enough for the timeout.

On my new Windows 11 computer, this printer system behavior has been changed and I no longer experience a delay while opening Calc."

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

#979

Post by PeterStuer »

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.

In the old days there was the saying 'What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away'

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

#980

Post by trinsic2 »

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…

> I know this is such a stereotypical "get off my lawn" statement but we've lost the art of software engineering.

Absolutely this. I think this is evidence that points to modern civilization starting to collapse. When we can engineer correctly, we're fucked.

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