I really admire Wine (more than I ever admired it during the past 10
years when it was floundering toward stability) and particularly
admire what
CodeWeavers
has achieved with Wine. I depend on CodeWeavers’ Linux product so I
can work on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files the same way my
Windows-addicted colleagues work on them. As impressive as OpenOffice
tools are, I’m just not confident I’ll get the results my colleagues
expect to see when I use OpenOffice to manipulate the MS Office
files I share with these people.
But sometimes Wine and CodeWeavers work too well. They can make Linux
bug-for-bug compatible with Windows. To illustrate this, I will
describe an amusing incident that just happened to me while I was
doing intensive work on a Word document.
Suddenly, during one of my attempts to save the file, I received the
dreaded error message familiar to every prisoner of Windows: “Out of
memory or disk space. Remove some files or close some applications…”The joke here is the error message was transparently lying–something
that wouldn’t be clear on a Windows system, but was clear here. I had
used up only 75% of the disk space on my partition (although
CodeWeavers does something strange I don’t quite understand with fake
Windows drives). And Linux was churning away happily; the
free program showed no strain on the system. The problem
was in Word and Word alone.
I plan to continue using MS Office products. In addition to the considerations I mentioned earlier, Word has some features I
wish OpenOffice Writer had, and from brief trials I can tell that
OpenOffice Impress is way behind PowerPoint in stability. But I don’t
like the realization that these office products have brought some of
the craziness of Windows with them.
Why would Word have memory problems on Linux?
Why would Word have memory problems
Because it is a Microsoft product, but you probably already knew that. :^)
Why would Word have memory problems
You'd be surprised at the number of memory problems in other applications, and probably even more surprised when you find out that Microsoft products have no more of them than those of the competition...
It's just as possible (if not more so) that the memory problem in this case was due to Wine reporting less resources to Word than were really there for whatever reason (maybe even the Wine developers wanting a practical joke and thinking it would be kewl (or was that c00l these days) to make Microsoft look bad by doing things that cause errors in Microsoft products), it's hard to tell...
Why would Word have memory problems
Same thing happens with word on Windowz 2K too.
Why would Word have memory problems
I concur, it happens to me on W2k sometimes too although not often.
It's a bit much to cast aspersions on Wine when Word exhibits behaviour under Wine it's already known for under Windows.
Simon Hibbs
Why would Word have memory problems
I agree with you, jwenting. I think Microsoft gets a bad rap for software quality when, in fact, their software quality is usually as good or better than other software. Part of it is, I think, that their software is just so used and visible that statistically speaking, of course the absolute number of bugs is going to be higher.
The one exception IMO seems to be that in many cases, the first released version is a bit inferior/buggy, but Microsoft seems to be excellent at taking user feedback from the initial versions and using it to quickly produce a superior product. That's why the usability of their products is generally very good IMO.
My issues with Microsoft are about their culture and practices of "success at any cost", including many less-than-honorable (some might say "anti-competitive") business practices toward both business and consumer customers.
It's obvious in big things like Netscape and DR-DOS, but also appears in scores of little places too, like the latest push to only include the latest IE with the newest Windows OS. My next PC will run Linux not because of any low quality of Microsoft products, but because of Microsoft's business practices.
--Anthony R. Thompson
Pretty biased there Andy
Closing with a knock on Wine because it's doing its job too good. Come on.
Why would Word have memory problems
I have had the same problems using Mac OS 9.2 and MS-Office 2001. No matter how much memory I allocate to the app, I still get the same message. So, I read about how another Mac/MS problem was solved when I defragmented my Hard Drive using Norton. Try it! It might just work!
---- maclover99 ----