Comments on: My Mac(Book) Sucks

Question: My Mac(Book) Sucks

roofus — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:09:45 -0800

Any advice for my MacBook Word / Excel / Powerpoint woes?

Office runs like a dog on my 512Mb 1.83GHz MacBook. It slows up, crashes sporadically, and is generally a pain to work with. I have been experimenting with NeoOffice, and am finding it equally slow to run, and inadequate in terms of features.
I'm sick of switching back and forward between two clunky bits of software. Can anyone recommend Nisus / Mellel / Pages / Keynote, and is there anything out there that offers half decent charts and graphs?
Alternatively, would a RAM upgrade make any difference? I upgraded the RAM on my iBook G4 to try and coax better performance out of Office, and it made no difference whatsoever.

By: edd

edd — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:25:36 -0800

It shouldn't be that slow, and it shouldn't be crashing. You don't have a massive amount of memory, but it should be alright as long as you don't try to do too much at once.

Run Activity Monitor (it'll be in Applications/Utilities) and keep an eye on the cpu load and memory usage. Note anything that seems to be using lots of cpu or memory, and see how much Inactive and Free memory you have, also check the VM size and page ins/outs - you'll want to see how much that latter figure changes rather than how large it is in general, as it's telling you each time the computer is having to swap out.

By: melorama

melorama — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:30:58 -0800

Oh dear lord...You need more RAM, end of story.

512 MB is simply an unusable amount of memory for OSX, especially if you want to run Rosetta apps.

I have a Macbook Pro with 2GB of RAM, and even with no, thing else running, my memory usage will go over 1GB if I launch most Rosetta applications.

Youu cant compare the performance between your old iBook G4 and the Macbook. There is a lot of system overhead involved in running non-native Rosetta apps on Intel based Macs, so just because a RAM didn't do much for you on a G4 Mac, certainly doesnt mean it won't make a difference on an Intel Mac.

By: roofus

roofus — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:40:51 -0800

Do I have to shell out for the whole 2Gb then? Who wants to buy two hardly used 256Mb blocks of MacBook RAM?

By: malevolent

malevolent — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:44:11 -0800

Yeah you really need 1Gb minimum if you're going to be running Rosetta apps like Office and Photoshop, ideally nearer to 2Gb.
Things'll improve next year when Universal versions are released, but until then you need to throw an awful lot of memory and processing power at them.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:46:49 -0800

Yes, you need more memory, because Office is run in emulation on the MacBook and that takes lots of memory. That said, Pages is a very good word processor.

By: willmize

willmize — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:56:57 -0800

I don't know if this is an alternative for you or not, but I recently switched, and run Neo Office just fine on my Dual Core mac mini.
It's free, so there wouldn't be any costs or risk associated with trying it out and see if it zooms or not.

By: edd

edd — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 05:05:19 -0800

You shouldn't be crashing from having too little memory though, I don't think. The point about Office being Rosetta is a good one (I wasn't aware Office wasn't up to date, since I avoid the thing like the plague). Definitely worth getting the memory if you are wanting to stick with Office however.

By: ranglin

ranglin — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 05:59:12 -0800

While I support everyone else's comments, I've got the exact same configuration Macbook and it is nowhere similar to yours.

Yes, Office takes some time to start, but it's pretty good once it does and it doesn't crash!

I'd be thinking about running some diagnostic software on your mac and also see if you can find a utility to monitor the temperature (sorry, I'm a recent Mac convert so I don't know any tools of the top of my head!).

Also, theres a patch floating around for the Macbook that fiddles the fan settings (mainly to get rid of the infamous 'mooing') and I'm not sure it applies automatically, so I'd also wonder whether that might help.

By: anonetal

anonetal — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:22:53 -0800

Second the RAM comments. I also very strongly recommend checking out the "Parallels" virtualization software if you run office apps regularly. It runs pretty fast (though I have only tried it on a iMac) and windows office apps are much better than the Mac versions.

By: horsemuth

horsemuth — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:52:39 -0800

Try these guys - it looks like they'll buy your old memory when you purchase the memory upgrade through them. I haven't tried them, though I was planning on it when I get my MacBook.

By: cebailey

cebailey — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:58:52 -0800

nth the RAM comments. Spend the $180 or so (if you look around) to get 2 GB. It will make your machine scream.

I've noticed that office is less than snappy on my 2 GHz MacBook. I tried the demo of Pages that came with my computer, and I really liked it. Of course, if you need interoperability with others, I don't think Pages will save to .doc format (or at least I haven't figured it out), but I really like the app a lot.

By: Dr. Wu

Dr. Wu — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:23:46 -0800

For whatever it's worth, I've found Keynote to be far less bloated as just as robust as Powerpoint, so between now and when you get more RAM, you might want to familiarize yourself with that program.

By: shagoth

shagoth — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 08:03:27 -0800

This is going to sound a little trolly, but seriously run Windows. Office 2003 for XP is fully feature compatible with Office 2003 for XP. Office for MacOS is not. You're hardware supports Bootcamp. Use it if Mac Office isn't performing as Office.

By: pollystark

pollystark — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 08:12:43 -0800

Pages will save to .doc (Word) format. Just choose Export (I believe it's in the File menu) and choose Word XP/2004/whateveritis from the menu.

By: evariste

evariste — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:37:25 -0800

You need more RAM, 512 is not enough.

Also, 10.4.8 came out today, and it includes some fixes for Office, so you should run Software Update.

By: jdroth

jdroth — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:03:53 -0800

Just another voice in the chorus for "more RAM". Whatever their other virtues — and I love my Macs — Macs are memory hogs. That and Apple habitually ships them without enough memory. In fact, I've often wondered why this is so. (They've been doing it for years.) Whenever I buy a Mac, I get as much RAM as I can afford. Default shipping specs are generally painful.

By: enrevanche

enrevanche — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 12:04:36 -0800

More RAM. 2GB. I have the same model computer
you do, and you won't believe the performance boost you get with more memory.

Also and as an aside, if you do any scientific, technical or academic writing *at all*, Mellel completely kicks ass.