Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

[Syed Zaeem Hosain]

Hi, Diane.

Diane Gaskill wrote:
> Word is also a memory hog.  It uses more than twice as much RAM as FM at
> launch and sucks up more as time goes on.  It often runs out of memory and
> sends error messages about no longer letting you undo anything.  If you are
> working in a Word doc over 150 pages or so, you are definitely taking
> chances and are likely to experience Word literally slowing down and
> eventually grinding to a halt.

Heartily agreed! I find the threshold to be lower - about 50 to 60 pages.
After which the problems in Word simply get too painful to deal with on
any given document. Particular when making lots of updates and changes
and graphics (don't get me started on that topic in Word!).

So, I use Word for most documents, since others in our company do not
have FrameMaker - then they can make changes (all changes and approvals
are separate issues, of course) without my being involved in the work.

But, when I reach the 50 page threshold for any given document, I convert
it to FrameMaker. This means that I also then get the responsibility for
*all* future changes to the document.

Good and bad side-effects. :)

Z