Will Word 2013 be a memory hog?

[skaertus]

I think Microsoft Office is a great piece of software. I thought Office 2003 was good, not great. But Office 2007 and Office 2010 were perhaps the best pieces of software that I've ever came accross. One of the things that I liked most is that, although Office is a very capable and full-featured product, it has such a small memory footprint.

I am currently using Office 2010 under Windows 7. When I edit a quite complicated 100-page document, full of footnotes and cross-references, Word 2010 consumes only about 50 MB of RAM. Sometimes it may consume a little more memory, but not too much more. It hardly goes over 100 MB.

I am also testing Office 2013 under Windows 8 on the very same laptop, but on a different partition. Word's behavior is completely different here. Word is easily consuming more than 100 MB of RAM all the time. Just by scrolling a 40-page document (which has no sryles, no footnote and no cross-references), Word took over 500 MB of RAM, and, when I scrolled faster, it surpassed 900 MB!

Is this behavior normal or am I doing something wrong? Did somebody also find the same issue while testing Office 2013?

 

[corkyg]

Have you tried it in Windows 7? Windows 8 adds another layer on top of all programs.

 

[skaertus]

Have you tried it in Windows 7? Windows 8 adds another layer on top of all programs.

No, I haven't tried it in Windows 7 yet. However, memory consumption of other software hasn't increased under Windows 8. I've tried Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and LibreOffice and I haven't noticed any increase in memory usage.

 

[blurredvision]

Keep in mind you're using a preview release, lots of debugging and other stuff is present to help diagnose any problems and also report back to the developers on how you are using the program. Plus, Office 2010 is pretty seasoned at this point, it's a very solid piece of programming.

I would definitely reserve judgment until you can trial the final release of Office 2013.

 

[Batmeat]

Although I like Office, I stick mainly to Corel Word Perfect. To me it's more simple and intuitive. Like others have said, you have to factor in that you're using beta software on an untested OS (thoroughly tested that is). I wouldn't fault it cause it's using 100mb's constantly. With all the structure and programming, 100mb's isn't that much.

 

[mechBgon]

I think Microsoft Office is a great piece of software. I thought Office 2003 was good, not great. But Office 2007 and Office 2010 were perhaps the best pieces of software that I've ever came accross. One of the things that I liked most is that, although Office is a very capable and full-featured product, it has such a small memory footprint.

I am currently using Office 2010 under Windows 7. When I edit a quite complicated 100-page document, full of footnotes and cross-references, Word 2010 consumes only about 50 MB of RAM. Sometimes it may consume a little more memory, but not too much more. It hardly goes over 100 MB.

I am also testing Office 2013 under Windows 8 on the very same laptop, but on a different partition. Word's behavior is completely different here. Word is easily consuming more than 100 MB of RAM all the time. Just by scrolling a 40-page document (which has no sryles, no footnote and no cross-references), Word took over 500 MB of RAM, and, when I scrolled faster, it surpassed 900 MB!

I opened Word 2013 Preview and scrolled the biggest document I have, as fast as possible, and saw RAM use surge to around 330MB maximum. With RAM going for about $5 per GB, and my main systems packing 16GB, I'm not going to let it bug me as long as it's doing something productive with it.

 

[corkyg]

Although I like Office, I stick mainly to Corel Word Perfect. ...

Amen to that!

 

[slayernine]

People still use word perfect? Why?

I'm becoming a big fan of Google docs but at work I used MS Office 2010.

 

[lxskllr]

People still use word perfect? Why?

It seems to be big with lawyers for some reason.

 

[Batmeat]

Although I hate to say it, in my experience WP is superior to Office. Among the legal community, WP is more of a standard.

 

[Batmeat]

It seems to be big with lawyers for some reason.

It integrates with other legal programs much better than Office does such as Amicus and Docs to name a couple.




Sorry, just realized I double posted back to back...I need to read and think better.

 

[skaertus]

I opened Word 2013 Preview and scrolled the biggest document I have, as fast as possible, and saw RAM use surge to around 330MB maximum. With RAM going for about $5 per GB, and my main systems packing 16GB, I'm not going to let it bug me as long as it's doing something productive with it.

330 MB is still a lot of memory. I do have 8 GB in my laptop, and it's more than enough to run Word 2013. However, I feel that the system becomes slow if one software uses too much memory. Word 2013 became slow when it used more than 500 MB (even though there is plenty of free memory still available). Just like Firefox becomes slow when it consumes up t 1 GB under Windows. Is it because the memory is not fast enough (mine is 1333 MHz) or because Windows does not manage large chunks of memory properly?

 

[mechBgon]

330 MB is still a lot of memory. I do have 8 GB in my laptop, and it's more than enough to run Word 2013. However, I feel that the system becomes slow if one software uses too much memory. Word 2013 became slow when it used more than 500 MB (even though there is plenty of free memory still available). Just like Firefox becomes slow when it consumes up t 1 GB under Windows. Is it because the memory is not fast enough (mine is 1333 MHz) or because Windows does not manage large chunks of memory properly?

What specific symptoms do you mean when you say Word 2013 became slow when it used more than 500MB? Input lag? Your initial complaint is about RAM usage when scrolling, which rules out doing any typing or editing. It could be your lappie's GPU isn't able to keep up with the rendering... I'm using Word 2013 on a gaming rig, so it has lots of GPU and video memory on tap. If you have a desktop system with a discrete GPU, maybe install the preview version there and see if it's smoother for you.

Personally, I think my peak RAM usage to date was around 13GB (editing HD video with GPS data overlay), so I'm a little jaded on the subject.

 

[mikeymikec]

Although I hate to say it, in my experience WP is superior to Office. Among the legal community, WP is more of a standard.

I prefer LibreOffice personally. MSO has its foibles, as does LibreOffice, and if I have to pick one set of foibles over the other, I prefer LO's. That and it is free, so updates/issues/enhancements are also free.

I think the last time I saw WP in action was a DOS version Ah, I did use v11 for about ten minutes once I think.