[BlouBul]

JorgeA, on 16 December 2010 - 08:52 AM, said:

I'd still like to know (if possible) what accounts for the difference. For document loading, the writer says that, "Word 2007 introduced the compressed .docx format which was smaller on the disk (so less disk I/O), but uncompressing and parsing XML requires much more CPU time."

I wonder if some sort of behind-the-scenes XML processing might be the source of all our troubles, since AFAIK it wasn't a part of Office 2000. FWIW, I should note that the original 7MB document is in .DOC format, but that saving it as a .DOCX file, despite decreasing the size to 6MB, didn't seem to have a dramatic effect on the loading time.

Since our tests in the previous thread showed hardly any difference in the opening times between the two formats, I do not think that got anything to do with it. I think it is more an intrinsic property in the way the different versions of Word opens a file. We will confirm that when we open the open the .doc file in Word 2000. If you want to, you can also open the .docx file in Word 2000 (with a suitable converter plugin), but I do not think there will be a significent difference.

[JorgeA]

Hi BlouBul,

Finally back in the action here! I had to work through midnight on Sunday, but I got the project done and now I can have some fun.

In our case, "fun" means that I got the chance, at long last, to uninstall Word 2007 from the Windows XP computer, and put Word 2000 on it in order to compare the file loading times. I ran a 5-test series with the same offending file, and here are the results, in seconds:

17 !
14 !!
18
17
14

Can you believe it?! It looks like this really clinches it: whatever the holdup is, it has to do with Word/Office 2007, as last week's benchmark webpage said.

So as I see it, there are two choices for speeding up the file loading process:

• Use Word 2000 instead of 2007; or
  
• Upgrade the hardware. I suspect that it's mainly CPU processing involved (right?), so that would mean getting a faster CPU, of the kind that CoffeeFiend recommended way back when at the start of this thread.

What do you think?

And of course, we always have Choice (3) not to do anything...

I hope you & family are having a good time on a warm beach!

--JorgeA

[BlouBul]

Hi JorgeA,

Just got home now. Only a week at the sunny coasts this year . Have to go to a family gathering inland during the Christmas period

I do not think faster hardware will come close to the Word 2000 times. So option 2 is not really an option to solve this problem. I suspect there is something intrinsically in Word 2007 that clashes with your type of files. I wonder if Word 2010 will be better? Maybe you can download a trial and sees if it is. http://office.micros..._enus_bnr_tryq2
Otherwise, stick with Clippy

[dencorso]

I second BlouBul's advice.

[JorgeA]

BlouBul, on 21 December 2010 - 12:38 PM, said:

Hi JorgeA,

Just got home now. Only a week at the sunny coasts this year . Have to go to a family gathering inland during the Christmas period

I do not think faster hardware will come close to the Word 2000 times. So option 2 is not really an option to solve this problem. I suspect there is something intrinsically in Word 2007 that clashes with your type of files. I wonder if Word 2010 will be better? Maybe you can download a trial and sees if it is. http://office.micros..._enus_bnr_tryq2
Otherwise, stick with Clippy

Hi BlouBul,

I'll see if it's possible to install the 2010 trial download on that XP machine, so we can compare. Thanks for the link. I'll let you know what happens.

Welcome back! I can relate to what you say about Christmas family gatherings...

Well, it looks like we've come up with a solid diagnosis and prescription for this problem. Thank you very much for sticking with me all this time -- there's no way I could have done it without your help.

Gratefully,

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

dencorso, on 21 December 2010 - 06:34 PM, said:

I second BlouBul's advice.

Hey dencorso,

Great that you got the chance to pop in!

BlouBul's advice is sensible. Getting a faster CPU would speed things up, but it wouldn't cut the loading time by nearly as much as a version of Word that's not so loaded down with background processing.

It's odd that nobody seems to have complained about this, and (especially) that so few tests appear to have been run to compare the performance of Word 2007 with earlier versions. In my Web research, most of the complaints about slow loading in Word seemed to have to do with particular program settings or corruption in the individual document, with (as far as I could tell) little focus on this issue that seems to be "built into" Word 2007. Now that we have a hypothesis, when I get the chance to I'll do research based on that, and see if anybody other than that Open Office guy ever reported the same problem.

--JorgeA