New Windows Scheduled Task Will Launch Office Apps Faster (bleepingcomputer.com)
- Reference: 0176839833
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/03/27/1727252/new-windows-scheduled-task-will-launch-office-apps-faster
- Source link: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-new-windows-scheduled-task-will-launch-office-apps-faster/
> The company says the "Startup Boost" task will launch in the background on logon, with the roll-out to start in mid-May and worldwide general availability to be reached by late May 2025. On systems where it's toggled on, users will see new Office Startup Boost and Office Startup Boost Logon tasks in the Windows Task Scheduler, which will ensure that Office apps can preload "performance enhancements."
>
> "We are introducing a new Startup Boost task from the Microsoft Office installer to optimize performance and load-time of experiences within Office applications," Microsoft says on the Microsoft 365 message center. "After the system performs the task, the app remains in a paused state until the app launches and the sequence resumes, or the system removes the app from memory to reclaim resources. The system can perform this task for an app after a device reboot and periodically as system conditions allow."
[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-new-windows-scheduled-task-will-launch-office-apps-faster/
And then you can wait longer... (Score:3)
And then you can wait longer while it swaps all that bilge _out_ of memory when you want to run something other than Office.
It really feels like Microsoft has nothing left to offer.
Re: (Score:3)
That's not how memory swapping works. You literally don't need to wait to overwrite cached data. By the way you know what OS maximises the amount of cached data in RAM during normal operation? ... Linux.
Re: (Score:3)
> That's not how memory swapping works ...
Mmm... that IS how memory _swapping_ works. What you're describing is disk caching.
TFA is pretty vague about what it's actually going to do, but when it talks about a "paused process", that sounds like it'll have an active process, rather than just "we'll read the relevant files so they're in cache".
And w/ SSDs the disk reads shouldn't be THAT bad anyway. i wonder what launch latency they're actually talking about here. like going from 5 sec to 2 sec or what ?
Re: And then you can wait longer... (Score:2)
The only new features I've used in office since whatever the last version of Office for Windows 3.1 is the spell checker underlining words, sometimes the grammar checker gets it right, and the standardized office file formats (docx, etc.)
Why? Also no. (Score:2)
That's a great idea, all applications should have their own Startup Boost process!
Maybe this is useful in an office environment, but I can't say that the startup time of Office applications ever bothered me, either at home or at work.
Office updates will re-enable it. (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
> "Please note that Office Installer will automatically recreate all scheduled tasks when it applies an update, so users who disable this task will need to disable it again after an Office update," Redmond said.
[*sigh*]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah... i thought the fight against bloat on PCs was mostly won about 10 years ago with Microsoft Signature edition, or at least that MS themselves were on the right side of things. ( [1]https://www.thurrott.com/windo... [thurrott.com] )
But i guess it's a new generation of mareteers... rolling through
[1] https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/67247/microsoft-signature-can-save-pc-industry
Give us prior written notice, we'll try our best.. (Score:2)
Give us prior written notice of when you'd like to use your own computer, we'll try our best to get it ready by then... Seriously?
Re: (Score:2)
> Give us prior written notice of when you'd like to use your own computer, we'll try our best to get it ready by then... Seriously?
It's best if you make an appointment to use your PC -- and they have to be made over the Internet ... :-)
Performace Enhancements my ass (Score:2)
They're just going to load most of that bloated pig into memory even when it's not in use. Didn't MS already try something like this in the past?
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if I can use a USB stick to make it even faster!!
Re: (Score:2)
"I wonder if I can use a USB stick to make it even faster!!" - You sure can! Make sure the stick has a Linux ISO on it and choose "Install" after it boots up. You can thank me later.
Just what I need - more startup shit to disable (Score:2)
Maybe people who launch and close and relaunch office apps all day will benefit from this. But most people I know don't work like that. You start the day by bringing up all your main apps and leave them running all day.
But as usual, MS loads more garbage on your system without asking and enables it by default, leaving it to users to figure out what changed and how to disable it.
Making Windows Worse, I See! (Score:3)
Windows is already bloated AF on boot. It takes a full 2-3 minutes for all background loading apps to load on boot/login, which causes a constant barrage of popups.
And this is with all non-essential things disabled.
-VPN
-Time Tracker
-Messaging Clients
-VoIP Software
-Security Software
-Required Driver Loaders & Support programs
Its brutal.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me punch down a bit...
my devuan laptop boots to login screen in < 7 seconds, enter user and pw, <2 seconds to desktop.
so about 10 seconds to desktop, firewall up, connected to VPN
launch of firefox or open office writer ... a blink of the eye... < 1 second
shutdown < 3 seconds
You're holding it wrong?
Useless Bullshit (Score:2)
Yes, waiting 5 or 6 seconds for Word to load is soooooooooooooooooo excruciating, almost unbearable. We definitely need a new app that runs in the background gobbling resources to make things go....faster?
No. Hell no. Just stop it. (Score:2)
Pre-caching piles of bullshit so my system resources aren't mine to do with as I please because you assume I want to launch office apps at every startup is... well, I was gonna say something about egregious ant-user bullshit, but then I realized that's just par for the course for Microsoft. How about you make that an easy to enable off by default thing instead of just forcing it down everyone's throat?
No thanks (Score:2)
One more shit I will have to disable. I bet they will re-enable it on every major update like their other craps.
Re: (Score:2)
not MAJOR, every.
> "Please note that Office Installer will automatically recreate all scheduled tasks when it applies an update, so users who disable this task will need to disable it again after an Office update," Redmond said.
Libreoffice used to have an option to do that (Score:1)
A decade or so ago, Libreoffice had an option to preload itself for faster startup.
[1]https://ask.libreoffice.org/up... [libreoffice.org]
I think that option has now disappeared in later updates.
But it's not a new idea.
[1] https://ask.libreoffice.org/uploads/asklibo/original/2X/e/e7b01db2ca79a3e7bad513396e81acba6d27d7f6.png
Re: (Score:2)
Office 95, 97, and Netscape both used to do it too, and I think even Office 4.3 or whatever the last version for Windows 3.1 had a quicklaunch toolbar that sped up launch using similar methods. I'm blanking on others but I remember some other big software having agents that sat in the systray to speed up launch. I usually kept all that disabled because they just sat there eating memory when unused and the improvement in launch speeds wasn't worth it.
Everything old is new again.
Re: (Score:2)
It still does, at least AFAIK.
Why? (Score:2)
I haven't found performance to be an issue with Office.
On my laptop (just over 8 years old), with a throttled CPU (ThrottleStop) - Word loads in 2 seconds (after a reboot and login).
A 2 second cold start is very reasonable.
Maybe they spend the time/resources improving Teams performance (which is much, much slower to load) and Windows performance - and enable the decrapification of Windows from stuff nobody needs and nobody asked for.
Open Office had this 20 years ago (Score:2)
About 20 years ago, you could have Open Office preload the programs and display a tray icon to start the programs faster.
This, of course, bought startup time at the cost of having less RAM for other programs, even when Office was not actively used.
It's all just ... (Score:2)
... swap space anyway. Thank goodness my computer has an infinite supply of that.
How long does it take to load Office? (Score:2)
I just tried loading LibreOffice Writer. It took ~1 second, honestly, how long does it take to load Microsoft Office? I just spun up a VM, the installation of Office took 10 minutes, Word loaded in ~1 second, close enough to LibreOffice Writer that it's a tie, so who is this feature benefiting?
Is it optional? Opt-in? No pestering? (Score:1)
If it's optional, opt-in, and you don't get pestered to opt-in, then I'm okay with it.
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing optional will be the opt-out and it will be ignored on the next reboot. Remember, it's Microsoft we're talking about.
So Office now runs at startup. (Score:2)
Ok, sure - glad I'm not using Office - or windows.
So when windows has to reboot several times for an update does it have to wait for office to 'pre-load' before rebooting each time?
As usual (Score:2)
Another thing we'll have to deactivate, like the stuff from Apple, Adobe,...
Pre-caching bloat. (Score:4, Funny)
So they're best idea for dealing with their bloated shitty code is to pre-cache the bloat as soon as you log in?
Innovation!
Re: (Score:2)
Look, I know the long-standing local trend of shitting on Windows, and I agree with most of it.
But I really don't see why Windows shouldn't profit off available memory and preload some DLLs, provided, of course, that the whole thing behaves and frees memory up when needed.
Re:Pre-caching bloat. (Score:4)
This reminds me of the old days, where you would come in in the morning, turn on your PC and go get a cup of coffee while it spent 5 minutes doing "background startup tasks" that rendered the system unusable until it completed.
It sucked.
Re: Pre-caching bloat. (Score:2)
It still does those, you just have an SSD instead of a spindle hard drive.
Re: Pre-caching bloat. (Score:2)
Not my PC. But then it ran Linux and booted in about 90 secs including desktop. Though these days KDE and Gnome seem to be apeing MS and take forever to start doing fuck knows what.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't see why they shouldn't make other applications slower to make their own ones faster?
Preloading applications in the background while I'm doing something else is going to slow down what I'm doing.
All so what, Microsoft can re-write all their apps in Javascript and run them inside embedded Edge browsers?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm OK with this as long as I get to choose what apps are preloaded, not Microsoft.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with Office isn't even the first launch. It's that EVERY application launch is slow and stupid. When I launch any office application, if I already have a window open in it, that window gets moved from where I left it and wanted it to fucking stay , it comes to the front, and then the new window gets tiled over it. This process takes every bit as long as the first launch.
In order to speed things up they are going to have to prelaunch each application and keep it hidden from you, then when you ask
Re: (Score:2)
They could write their applications in a real programming language, not what ever they wrote New Outlook in that requires it run in an Edge container.
Outlook was faster and more responsive 20 years ago second hand ex-lease PC's my old boss used to buy compared to my current work laptop, which is no slouch with an i7-1265 cpu and 32gb of ram.
Re: (Score:2)
New Outlook is a wrapper for Outlook on the Web. They literally dumped the native app to give you a web view. Just a browser now, no extra app code to write.
Re: Pre-caching bloat. (Score:2)
Who are you a sock puppet of? It's clear that is the case.
Re: (Score:2)
"Fixing" performance problems this way seems to be baked into Microsoft corporate culture.