TESTING VISTA

[Truthfinder]

I have a question for the group, hopefull it can be answered.

I currently have two identical T-60 units, one is loaded with Vista Home Premium and the other loaded with XP Pro.

Both units have the same programs installed.

My question is this: I have noticed that when I go to open MS Word in my XP unit, it takes about 20-25 seconds to open. When opening Word in the Vista system, word is up and ready to go in
2-3 seconds flat.

My MS OFFICE HAS ALL UPDATES AND SERVICE PACKS ON BOTH UNITS. ANY IDEAS ON HOW TO SPEED UP THE WORD LOAD TIME UNDER XP ?

Thank you all.........

[mgo]

I have a question for the group, hopefull it can be answered.

I currently have two identical T-60 units, one is loaded with Vista Home Premium and the other loaded with XP Pro.

Both units have the same programs installed.

My question is this: I have noticed that when I go to open MS Word in my XP unit, it takes about 20-25 seconds to open. When opening Word in the Vista system, word is up and ready to go in
2-3 seconds flat.

My MS OFFICE HAS ALL UPDATES AND SERVICE PACKS ON BOTH UNITS. ANY IDEAS ON HOW TO SPEED UP THE WORD LOAD TIME UNDER XP ?

Thank you all.........

I am comparing Vista vs. XP pro on the same machines, too. I use two separate hard drives that I simply plug in when I want to run Vista or XP.

Yes, it seems that Office does start up faster with Vista. Could it be that Vista handles those programs better? My theory is that the Vista version of Prefetch does a better job of allowing Office apps to start up faster. That's what it is for, and it must might be working better than the XP version of Prefetch.

[Truthfinder]

Thanks for the response.

I imagine you are correct about the prefetch in Vista doing a better job.

I have been very firm on staying with XP, but I too fire up Vista every now and than just to re-enforce the fact that Vista has issues. It runs well in my T-60 (2623D7U), however, my issue is that several of my more costly programs won't run under the Vista hood. I refuse to go out and lay out a ton of money to upgrade programs that are only a year or so old. As long as Vista and my programs won't run, I will stay with XP..................

Again, thanks..............

[ulrich.von.lich]

it takes about 20-25 seconds to open.

Are you using MS Office 2007?

It takes only 2 seconds to open MS Word 2003 on my T43 with XP Pro. Within Vista it opens instantly thanks to the superfetch feature. It does take longer to open Word 2007 but never would it be that long.

Maybe you should try to load it without plugins.(MS Student plugin for Word etc..) Sometimes the slow performance is caused by anti virus software. My outlook has become slower after I installed Avast

[SHoTTa35]

XP doesn't have SuperFetch and uses the pagefile a lot more than Vista even if you have 2GB of RAM. With Vista it load everything into the RAM instead of the pagefile if you have it.

Here's a test, copy a huge file, like 4GB from one folder to another (not move) then while that's going open Word, see where it opens faster. When i open Word on my Vista laptop the HD LED doesn't even flash because it's basically already running in the RAM.

Also ever notice how XP feels after playing a big game? Most of the time you gotta reboot but with Vista you can continue using your normal apps without the crazy HD LED flashing

[Truthfinder]

I'm using Office 2003 Pro. My Thinkpad has 2 gigs of Ram.

I think the issue of long loading time with Word is due to the fact that I have Norton Internet Security running.

Is there any adjustment in Norton that will help speed up the load time of my Office programs?

Thanks, Steve

[jdhurst]

I have Office 2003, 768Mb of Ram and Symantec Client Security 3.1 using XP Pro. Word typically opens for me in about 5 seconds (Desktop or ThinkPad - same config and hard drive speed). Only rarely does it spend 20 seconds to open (once a month or thereabouts).
... JDH

[ulrich.von.lich]

Some anti virus software may slow down the performance of Outlook (real time proctection such as scanning incoming emails/attachments etc). I've never used Norton but I doubt it'd make such a big different opening Word. And it looks quite normal on jdhurst's system.

Is it always that slow? Have you experienced similar slow performance while using other programs?

[Truthfinder]

I Figured out how to make M.S. Word opem much faster.



The solution: Move .dot files from

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP

To
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

This allows you to prevent Word from automatically opening the templates every time you restart the program. You can then select them through the standard templates and add-ins screen under the "Tools->Template and Add-ins->Add" menu.


Hope this helps others in our group.

Steve

[Marin85]

Hi,
I think it really depends on which version of MS office you use. On the same machine a clean installed XP loads Word 2003 faster than Vista (I just click on the icon and it´s there), but loads Word 2007 a bit slower than Vista. What is more, a clean install of XP loads Word 2003 faster than a clean install of Vista loads Word 2007.
...Just a few words on that comparison...

Cheers

M.