We have 64 bit multi-core CPUs unconstrained by clock speeds, RAM, bus bottlenecks, instructions sets, addressing modes, registers, or storage speeds. Monitors are beyond visual resolution, graphics are pumped out at a rate of zillions and gazillions of 32 bit pixels per second. How can any software be anything less than instantaneous these days? How can this modern bloated AI-dreamt high-level sludge code be as slow as my Commodore 64 booting GEOS from a 5.25" floppy?
The mouse button shouldn’t even have time to bounce up from my finger releasing it and the screen should already be loaded.
Companies running 10-20 year old hardware and the amount of spyware that exists nowadays gets in the way
Tons of legacy code that has to run at startup.
And better hardware means there is no longer a requirement to optimise.
What was “if we don’t make this code more efficient, it won’t run on modern computers”, turned into “we don’t need to make this code efficient because modern computers will be able to run it”
You see this with video games, too, where PC games are better optimized when they’re multiplatform releases that also are on one or more consoles near the end of their sales life, just because they had to make it run smoothly on hardware that was comparatively out of date.
Dynamic libraries are also time hogs
And this is how adding code to Word 97 for 28 years without refactoring works.
Interestingly they did the same with Word 97: loaded Office at startup so the individual Office applications would seem to launch faster.
I switched to LibreOffice more than a decade ago and I never missed Microsoft Office 🤷♀️
(EDIT: I don’t mean this dogmatically, there are plenty of times I have had to compromise and go back to proprietary software, but LibreOffice really has successfully replaced Microsoft Office for me - it’s just as feature-rich and reliable with a similar UI. Google Sheets has a few features that I like and which aren’t in LibreOffice or MS Office, but I only use that for work when I need a collaborative sheet.)
Another libreoffice user here. Published a couple of academic works edited entirely on it, and no one complained about formatting errors. Things have improved a lot in the last years. We also have onlyoffice as another great alternative
+1 I used LibreOffice all through university, wrote dozens of papers, did class presentations, résumés, etc. Never had a problem. I use it at work too and collaborate with O365 users often.
Such an awesome piece of software. I used OnlyOffice as well, really nice if you don’t need the fancier features that LibreOffice has.
Wait isn’t OnlyOffice more feature wise closer to MS office, and with a more similar layout? Used it shortly but realized I like the “older” non ribbon UI of LO, but I’m still relearning the old office layout.
It’s designed to be more compatible with MS’ .docx formats, less weird formatting issues when converting between them. But the actual features it has is less than LibreOffice.
Two different focuses, LibreOffice is designed with more powerful features and uses the .odf file format by default.
OnlyOffice is lighter weight and designed with MS Office compatibility first and foremost, although both suites support both file formats and in my experience, both work great with either file types and for basic users, have all the features you would need.
But now windows takes longer to boot and is too slow because ms office is always running in the background. +1 for reasons to use linux.
I’m constantly shocked how poorly Windows 11 runs on brand new high end hardware.
My current company uses brand new $1,500 HP enterprise grade laptops and they frequently freeze up, stutter, and get really hot from basic office work.
My old Debian servers I used to have there were running butter smooth with KDE Plasma on 12 year old hardware.
All those screenshots don’t get processed for free.
Yeah ofc Lol.
So their AI can’t fix this issue?
Needs more vibe.
Remember the other day when Microsoft boasted that 40% of their code is written by AI?
Of course it’s slow, it’s full of telemetry, spyware and built-in AI junk, it couldn’t be any different
It is so weird, I remember Office 97 loading very fast on Intel Pentium 3. Now suddenly it needs preloading on startup with 4-6 core PCs…
It would be awesome if we could map the increase in hardware demands on popular software by each new feature, design changes, and other minor changes added over time.
Recently installed office 2000 via bottles/wine on linux. The installation was so quick that i thought it crashed.
Coming soon to your neck of the woods… Copilot OS! Now with no Windows, only Copilot and a shitty embedded MS Edge. Everything you know as Windows is hidden behind an enforced Microsoft account which you cannot bypass or opt-out! Oh—and don’t forget—you now need a PC with 64GB DDR6789 RAM, RBG+ chipset with tiny peener cache, 2 BRAIN TRACING GPUs, SUPER SECURE BOOT, TrustClock, Lie Detector, Bio-metric reader created by NSA, and their secret time bomb tracker that will secretly ghost all your data at a moments notice and require you to purchase the subscription to ALL STAR MEGA SUPER SONIC ULTRA CLOUD DATA WAREHOUSE. Oh, but hey, at least it’s software upgradable…
Windows is actually streamed from the MS Cloud™. Only Copilot and the Word loader run locally.
What? You live in a lower income country and doesn’t have a reliable internet connection and a high spec machine? Our board of directors have a personal message for you:
spoiler
“Fuck you!”
Don’t use Windows? Use Linux instead.
Just a thought.
I vaguely remember that they were already preloading the Office DLLs way back in Windows 95 or XP days.
Yeah I remember something similar, office quickstart I vaguely remember it being called
Of course it came with a toolbar back then
Again: switch to Linux already, use Libre Office or if you have to, google docs. Heck, install onlyoffice if you want it self hosted online, anything but Microsoft
Windows already takes far to long to load. I turn on my Linux PC and by time I stand up to get a coffee it’s ready to go, then I remember it’s Saturday and I won’t be using Windows 11 all blessed day!
OfficeClickToRun.exeis years and years old. This isn’t a new thing at all.that’s the c2r maintenance process. main job is to set up and update the local files for office.
It’s a maintenance process which preloads essential office files into memory for usage when you launch the different Microsoft applications so their startup time is reduced as well.
I’m having flashbacks to Word 6 for Mac, when everyone downgraded back to Word 5.1.
