PC World's Michael Crider reports that Office is now so slow to load that "Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup." The "Startup Boost" function, soon to be available, frontloads the suite's apps so they are ready to use—at whatever cost to performance results from them being memory-resident.
You know how every annoying Windows program wants to launch as soon as you boot up your computer? Well, now Office is going to do that … in the company's defense, the announcement in the Microsoft 365 Message Center Archive (spotted by The Verge) does say that the new tool will only be enabled on PCs that have at least 8GB of RAM and 5GB of free disk space. I think even trying to run Windows 11 on just 8GB of RAM is kind of optimistic these days, but at least there's a floor.
The tradeoff seems a poor one, for users. A famously bloated app loads with the operating system, irrespective of other things you might want to do with it? If systems come preconfigured with it, Microsoft gets an anti-competitive edge against other office suite apps, too.
"A cynic might wonder why Microsoft is making Office start when the computer boots instead of, you know, just making Office more efficient so it can run faster," writes Crider. "(There's no second part to that statement. The cynic is me. I want Office to be more efficient.)"
Alas, there's a special place where nothing can be fixed but more must always be added, and Windows is in it. A technical counterpart to the ratchet effect in economics and politics—and I see the wikipedia article for the ratchet effect as a completely uncited section for products!
Previously: Did I really just switch from Mac to Windows?
