While I'm really enjoying the MacBook, I've discovered a problem that just irks the crap out of me. The Office Notifications application (that ships as part of Microsoft Office:mac 2004 must be some sort of steaming pile of...well, I'll let you fill in the rest.
Office Notifications is the application that handles displaying a notification of an event or task reminder that you set up in Microsoft Entourage. There is a background application that runs all the time on your computer when you have Office:mac installed called Microsoft Database Daemon. This application is in charge of monitoring the current time on your computer and comparing it to various times in your calendar of events or tasks list. If you have Entourage set to remind you about events or tasks at certain times, and the time is correct, this background application will launch Office Notifications, which will then handle displaying the reminder by putting up a little floating window with the reminder in it.
This is where the problem comes in.
At least on my MacBook, it can take upwards of two to three minutes for the Office Notifications application to launch. Yes. I wrote that correctly: two to three minutes. I've watched the icon show up in the dock and bounce for three minutes before the application is considered "launched" by the system. During this time, the computer can become unresponsive with a lot of watching the Spinning Pizza of Death cursor spin away and nothing much else happening.
Once the Office Notifications application has launched, things get even worse. It can spend another two to three minutes before it actually displays the reminder window. When the window finally does display, the sound that is played to accompany the reminder is very broken up and stuttery (although I'm not sure "stuttery" is a word).
Once the reminder is shown, the computer becomes somewhat more responsive, but still has lag problems until the reminder is dismissed. Once the reminder is dismissed, the computer resumes its quick and speedy ways.
So, really, the question must be asked: "WHAT IS THIS APPLICATION DOING?" (yes, I was shouting that question). What is it doing that apparently takes up so many system resources as to make the rest of the system slow to a crawl—and remember, this is just to show a single window. Nothing more, for all practical purposes.
I know that Office:mac (and therefore Office Notifications) is not an Intel-native software package. I know that means the software has to run in the Rosetta emulation layer. I understand that means that the software won't run as fast as it would on a PPC-based computer. But, were talking about a simple application that does nothing more than show a window and play a sound. If Word can run smoothly without causing the rest of the system to grind to a halt, so should Office Notifications.
I can not, for the life of me, figure out what this application is doing. I don't have a single other application on the MacBook that causes these types of problems.
Office Notifications: The Root of All Evil.
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