Entourage 2008 -- Seems Slow

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Level 2

253 points

Entourage 2008 -- Seems Slow

My boss handed me an Office 2008 DVD, so I loaded it. Is it jut me or all programs slower? Entourage, which I use most from this suite, takes about 30 seconds to come up after I click the icon in the dock. Any recommendations to speed things up?

TIA,

Geoff

Quicksilver 733 (sonnet 1.6 gb), 933, PB 15" 1.67 Superdrive - 1.5 gb ram (both), Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Jul 29, 2008 3:51 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

239,375 points

Jul 29, 2008 4:28 PM in response to PS1

At this point I think you should get Applejack...
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19596

After installing, reboot holding down CMD+s, then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...

applejack AUTO

Then let it do all 5 of it's things.

At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.

The 5 things it does are...

Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.

First reboot will be slower, sometimes 2 or 3 restarts will be required for full benefit... my guess is files relying upon other files relying upon other files! 🙂

Disconnect any USB cable from any UPS so the system doesn't shut down in the middle of the process.

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Answer 2

Jul 29, 2008 8:42 PM in response to PS1

Hi Geoff,

First, here are the minimum requirements for Entourage; Office 2008:

To run Microsoft® Office 2008 for Mac, your computer must meet the following requirements:
• Processor: A Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (500 MHz or faster) processor
• Operating System: Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later
• Memory: 512 MB of RAM or more
• 1.5 GB of available hard disk space
• Hard Disk: HFS+ hard disk format (also known as Mac OS Extended or HFS Plus)
• Drives: DVD drive or connection to a local area network (if installing over a network)
• Display: 1024 x 768 or higher-resolution monitor
• Entourage and certain features require Internet access (fees may apply)

Here's more info: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/entourage2008/default.mspx#/interacting_en tourage/

No application should require 30 minutes to load. I'm wondering how much available disk space you have on the drive. To view this information, open Disk Utility from your Applications/Utilities folder. With Disk Utility open, select MacintoshHD in the panel on the left, then look down toward the bottom of the window where it says: Capacity and Available. Make sure your Available disk space is at least 20% of the total disk space. Another way to view this information is to open a Finder window. The info will be displayed at the bottom of the window. If disk space is tight, you might want to move some large files i.e.; audio/images/video off the drive.

Carolyn 🙂

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Answer 3

Limnos

Level 10

411,253 points

Jul 29, 2008 11:07 PM in response to Carolyn Samit

No application should require 30 minutes to load.

OP: "30 seconds"

Is this the first time you have run the application? I have noted with Office apps that the first time you run them they are configuring themselves for your computer and can take a really long time. Subsequent starts don't take as long.

Slower? Seems likely. Every time anybody brings out new software it is often bigger and almost always requires more resources. Unless you change your computer to meet those added demands the penalty is slower response.

Message was edited by: Limnos

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Answer 4

PS1 Author

Level 2

253 points

Jul 30, 2008 8:54 AM in response to Limnos

Thanks for the responses everyone. Trying suggestions from this post and other solutions below, I've a marginal increase in load times...

Seems, after a lot of searching on the forums, that slowness is a matter of course for this version -- at least for "older" systems, perhaps less with Intel Macs.

I ran Cocktail and did the Open Firmware/reset NVRAM, and spun a dead chicken around the CPU.

I also tried the following, from Kurt Lang, which seems to have helped others with slowdowns:

Shut down all Office applications. Go to the Preferences folder in your user account and remove the folder "Office 2008" within the "Microsoft" folder. Office 2008 doesn't use a Normal template file, but the old one from 2004 can still supposedly slow it down. In your user account, go to the /Documents/Microsoft User Data/ folder and remove the file named "Normal".

Office 2008 also installs a heck of a lot of fonts that don't need to be active to use the programs. If you're kind of short on RAM, the fonts may be taking up too much space in RAM. To deactivate them, go to the /Library/Fonts/ folder and move the entire folder name Microsoft to the desktop.

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