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memoQ - a rant
Thread poster: Anna Sarah Krämer
Anna Sarah Krämer
Anna Sarah Krämer
Germany
Local time: 20:50
Member (2011)
English to German
+ ...
Jul 22, 2016

I know that Trados is supposedly the most problematic software - but I cannot really confirm that. For me it is memoQ. Here are some of the problems I face almost every day:

- the software freezes or crashes for no apparent reason and has to be restarted
- WebSearch does not open - or if it does, it eats up my computers memory and blocks the whole computer
- the spell check causes the program to freeze
- the file structure is too complicated

I really l
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I know that Trados is supposedly the most problematic software - but I cannot really confirm that. For me it is memoQ. Here are some of the problems I face almost every day:

- the software freezes or crashes for no apparent reason and has to be restarted
- WebSearch does not open - or if it does, it eats up my computers memory and blocks the whole computer
- the spell check causes the program to freeze
- the file structure is too complicated

I really like memoQ for its many useful functions - but the constant crashes are starting to irritate me. I would like to know if colleagues experience similar issues or if it's just me after all. Maybe this IS the perfect excuse for buying a new machine?

I am using a Samsung Laptop with Windows 10, Intel i5 and 6GB RAM - should be enough for the software plus DNS and some background music - or isn't it?
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Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
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English to Spanish
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Very stable indeed! Jul 22, 2016

Your report is very surprising indeed. I use memoQ about 10-12 hours a day, with my computer being turned off/reset only a couple of times a month, and memoQ freezes very rarely indeed. If anything, it could block when importing or analysing very large files (over 50,000 words or so).

I really think you should let Kilgray examine your computer and try to pinpoint the problem.

(Edited to add this: even our memoQ Server setup is very stable. We have it turned on for ever
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Your report is very surprising indeed. I use memoQ about 10-12 hours a day, with my computer being turned off/reset only a couple of times a month, and memoQ freezes very rarely indeed. If anything, it could block when importing or analysing very large files (over 50,000 words or so).

I really think you should let Kilgray examine your computer and try to pinpoint the problem.

(Edited to add this: even our memoQ Server setup is very stable. We have it turned on for ever and it very very rarely crashes.)

[Edited at 2016-07-22 11:13 GMT]
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Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
my view Jul 22, 2016

Anna Sarah Krämer Fazendeiro wrote:

I know that Trados is supposedly the most problematic software - but I cannot really confirm that. For me it is memoQ. Here are some of the problems I face almost every day:

- the software freezes or crashes for no apparent reason and has to be restarted
- WebSearch does not open - or if it does, it eats up my computers memory and blocks the whole computer
- the spell check causes the program to freeze
- the file structure is too complicated

I really like memoQ for its many useful functions - but the constant crashes are starting to irritate me. I would like to know if colleagues experience similar issues or if it's just me after all. Maybe this IS the perfect excuse for buying a new machine?

I am using a Samsung Laptop with Windows 10, Intel i5 and 6GB RAM - should be enough for the software plus DNS and some background music - or isn't it?


Hmm, 6GB is pushing it, imo, if you want to use DNS too. I have 32GB.

- the software freezes or crashes for no apparent reason and has to be restarted
I never have this problem. Running the latest version of memoQ 2015 (155).

- WebSearch does not open - or if it does, it eats up my computers memory and blocks the whole computer
I don't have this problem.

- the spell check causes the program to freeze
If you connect the spelling/grammar system to MS Word, it can be very slow, but doesn't freeze memoQ, I just need to wait a bit for it to start up. Once it's working it's fine speed-wise.

- the file structure is too complicated
This is a complaint I keep hearing, but I feel the same way about Studio, and love the memoQ system. I think it might be due to people rooting around in memoQ's own project files, which I never really bother looking at. I mean the ones here:

E:\Dropbox\programs\memoQ\Projects (note that I moved them from the default location and into Dropbox)

memoQ-file-structure

In terms of the file structure that I actually interact with on a daily basis, prior to each new project, I create a specially-named folder under E:\Dropbox\Business\Clients, into which I place the src texts for translation. I then create a project in memoQ, and drag and drop the aforementioned src files onto the "Translations" in the Project home in memoQ. As I work on the job, I never look what's going on in the memoQ project folder, only in my own Clients folder(s).

Michael


 
CafeTran Training (X)
CafeTran Training (X)
Netherlands
Local time: 20:50
Wow! Jul 22, 2016

Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:

I use memoQ about 10-12 hours a day


How do you manage to stay focussed and fit, if you don't mind me asking?


 
Anna Sarah Krämer
Anna Sarah Krämer
Germany
Local time: 20:50
Member (2011)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
More RAM Jul 22, 2016

Michael Joseph Wdowiak Beijer wrote:

I have 32GB.




Where to get a machine with 32GB RAM? I was looking in the shops the other day and in terms of laptops 8GB seems to be the best one can get...

In SDL Trados I am used to work with the project files - I don't understand all of these files memoQ creates and that bothers me ... I will try to ignore them, but still...


 
Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:50
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
Dell Precision M6800 17" (yes, they still exist) Jul 22, 2016

Anna Sarah Krämer Fazendeiro wrote:

Michael Joseph Wdowiak Beijer wrote:

I have 32GB.




Where to get a machine with 32GB RAM? I was looking in the shops the other day and in terms of laptops 8GB seems to be the best one can get...

In SDL Trados I am used to work with the project files - I don't understand all of these files memoQ creates and that bothers me ... I will try to ignore them, but still...



Ha ha, I have this one: http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Dell-Precision-M6800-Notebook.104663.0.html

It's ugly, heavy and huge, but built to last and capable of anything a desktop could do. I've had it for years and plan to use it for many more. Mine is no longer sold, but the new ones look amazing: http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/precision-laptops?~ck=bt&c=uk&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

From the Dell Precision page:

"If you want... Choose...
Extreme performance for large data sets 32GB memory
Premiere performance capability 16GB memory
Advanced performance capability 8GB memory
Basic performance 4GB memory"


 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 19:50
Danish to English
+ ...
Stable here Jul 22, 2016

I run it on a laptop from 2011 with 8 GB RAM and Windows 7. I don't have any MemoQ stability problems, and I know my disk is becoming a bottleneck (I should fit a SSD instead).

It may have crashed a few times through the year, but Outlook crashes far more often, and I'd say the frequently of MemoQ crashes is no higher than that of Windows' blue screen of death.

It takes a couple of minutes to load, but once loaded, I have acceptable response times.

MS Word
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I run it on a laptop from 2011 with 8 GB RAM and Windows 7. I don't have any MemoQ stability problems, and I know my disk is becoming a bottleneck (I should fit a SSD instead).

It may have crashed a few times through the year, but Outlook crashes far more often, and I'd say the frequently of MemoQ crashes is no higher than that of Windows' blue screen of death.

It takes a couple of minutes to load, but once loaded, I have acceptable response times.

MS Word spellcheck is a bit slow indeed, but it doesn't freeze.

If you have MemoQ support, you should open a ticket. They are usually helpful with technical problems and get the bugs solved. Clearly, something is not working as it should on your computer. Whether it's MemoQ's fault or something else would require some debugging, though.

MemoQ can certainly be improved, but I find it far more intuitive than Trados.
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Cristiana Coblis
Cristiana Coblis  Identity Verified
Romania
Local time: 21:50
Member (2004)
English to Romanian
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Upgrading the RAM memory Jul 22, 2016

Hi, Anna.
I share your frustration with memoQ. I use both Studio and Memoq frequently and they both have their pros and cons. I do find memoQ somewhat unfriendly and unintuitive as well. Some of the workflows (I'm looking at you, LQA) drive me crazy. However, it has its uses so I put up with it. What can you do...

As far as your hardware configuration, I run memoQ on several machines. I have problems running it on Windows 10 because that machine has a very high screen resoluti
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Hi, Anna.
I share your frustration with memoQ. I use both Studio and Memoq frequently and they both have their pros and cons. I do find memoQ somewhat unfriendly and unintuitive as well. Some of the workflows (I'm looking at you, LQA) drive me crazy. However, it has its uses so I put up with it. What can you do...

As far as your hardware configuration, I run memoQ on several machines. I have problems running it on Windows 10 because that machine has a very high screen resolution and it completely messes up MemoQ. That's a different issue, probably memoQ is not yet adapted to that kind of resolution.

I do not think you need 32 GB for translation work, but 6 GB is insufficient IMHO. I would look into upgrading your RAM memory. If you want to buy a machine with that kind of RAM it can be very expensive, but you can buy a machine that can be upgraded, which is always what has worked best for me. I would recommend to have someone look at your machine and they should be able to tell you if your hardware can be upgraded and they can recommend what would be the max upgrade you can have on that machine. I recently upgraded almost everything on my husband's laptop, it was very slow, so I upgraded his processor and RAM, it works much better now and it is faster. This is usually quick work and not as costly as buying a new laptop.

HTH
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Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 19:50
Danish to English
+ ...
RAM Jul 22, 2016

Cristiana Coblis wrote:

I do not think you need 32 GB for translation work, but 6 GB is insufficient IMHO. I would look into upgrading your RAM memory.



6 GB may be barely enough, but it shouldn't make software or systems freeze or crash, simply slow them down because of increased paging between RAM and virtual memory on disk. Even if I have 8 GB, my effective use of RAM is typically 4-5 GB. It depends what else you do on your computer simultaneously, of course.

If it crashes a lot, it's unlikely to be a performance problem.

The "M" in RAM stands for "memory", so writing it again becomes a bit of an echo, by the way


 
Cristiana Coblis
Cristiana Coblis  Identity Verified
Romania
Local time: 21:50
Member (2004)
English to Romanian
+ ...
6 GB Jul 22, 2016

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

6 GB may be barely enough, but it shouldn't make software or systems freeze or crash, simply slow them down because of increased paging between RAM and virtual memory on disk. Even if I have 8 GB, my effective use of RAM is typically 4-5 GB. It depends what else you do on your computer simultaneously, of course.

If it crashes a lot, it's unlikely to be a performance problem.


Yes, you are probably right. I think my old laptop had 6 GB and I did not experience any crashing, just slowness. My desktop has 8 GB and it seems to work fine, no crashes, no slowness (on local files... server is a different animal). It might be a different issue. I would also try uninstalling and reinstalling, maybe something got corrupted.

It might work to simply increase the virtual memory. Anyway, I would have it checked at a computer shop, maybe there is some type of issue or maybe they can upgrade it. I tend to do some upgrades on my machines every other year or so, I find it's always good if it's possible. Slowness is always frustrating, but crashes while working are infuriating.

PS: Force of habit, in Romanian we frequently use RAM memory... Romanians are not very fond of abbreviations))


 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 19:50
Danish to English
+ ...
MemoQ support Jul 22, 2016

I'd still start with MemoQ support. They'd have more of an idea where to start. It could be all sorts of issues from a corrupted MemoQ installation to corrupted user or system files or services or a problem of incompatibility between a specific hardware item and MemoQ, failing hardware etc. There are endless possibilities.

Support is likely to be able to diagnose what happens, based on a dump or detailed error reports. They'd also be able to suggest various hardware and software dia
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I'd still start with MemoQ support. They'd have more of an idea where to start. It could be all sorts of issues from a corrupted MemoQ installation to corrupted user or system files or services or a problem of incompatibility between a specific hardware item and MemoQ, failing hardware etc. There are endless possibilities.

Support is likely to be able to diagnose what happens, based on a dump or detailed error reports. They'd also be able to suggest various hardware and software diagnosis utilities relevant to the problem.

If it's a general performance problem, it shouldn't only be MemoQ that crashes but a bit of everything.

Just changing parts without understanding what's wrong is more likely to waste time and money than to solve the problem.

If it's any comfort, back in the 1980s, when updates to IBM systems were still provided on tapes called PUT (Program Update Tape), many IBM employees kept calling them “PUT tapes”, effectively saying "program update tape tape".

More random-access memory memory can do no harm and may be useful in any case; I just don’t think that’s what causes the crashes.
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Anna Sarah Krämer
Anna Sarah Krämer
Germany
Local time: 20:50
Member (2011)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
RAM not the (main) problem Jul 22, 2016

Glad to know others are not experiencing the same problems, it helps to find the actual problem.

I do have issues with lots of 100% disc usage I am trying to fix now. My RAM usually does not exceed 60%, but starts to have problems when I use memoQ web search.

Michael, I don't find any machine with 32GB on the page - 16GB is the most there is. Still thinking about buying a new machine, but rather would wait till next year, if this one keeps working - the family member wh
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Glad to know others are not experiencing the same problems, it helps to find the actual problem.

I do have issues with lots of 100% disc usage I am trying to fix now. My RAM usually does not exceed 60%, but starts to have problems when I use memoQ web search.

Michael, I don't find any machine with 32GB on the page - 16GB is the most there is. Still thinking about buying a new machine, but rather would wait till next year, if this one keeps working - the family member who "recycles" my old laptops is eagerly waiting for a "new old" laptop.

I wish I had a good computer specialist nearby, but the "experts" from the local shop here usually just manage to delete important files and install unwanted software, not to solve any problems. I'd probably be better off bringing my laptop to the local vet...

I will check out memoQ support...
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Georgie Scott
Georgie Scott  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 20:50
French to English
+ ...
I have had some of those problems Jul 22, 2016

Anna Sarah Krämer Fazendeiro wrote:

Glad to know others are not experiencing the same problems, it helps to find the actual problem.

I do have issues with lots of 100% disc usage I am trying to fix now. My RAM usually does not exceed 60%, but starts to have problems when I use memoQ web search.

Michael, I don't find any machine with 32GB on the page - 16GB is the most there is. Still thinking about buying a new machine, but rather would wait till next year, if this one keeps working - the family member who "recycles" my old laptops is eagerly waiting for a "new old" laptop.

I wish I had a good computer specialist nearby, but the "experts" from the local shop here usually just manage to delete important files and install unwanted software, not to solve any problems. I'd probably be better off bringing my laptop to the local vet...

I will check out memoQ support...


I've had problems with MemoQ freezing but it was because I was working on "live" files on an agency's server and their server had issues/kept getting switched off. Once we spoke to the agency the problem stopped for the most part.

For spellcheck, before I installed the Hunspell dictionaries it literally (yes, literally not figuratively) took me hours to spellcheck. Once I installed them and made sure I was using them, that stopped. https://www.memoq.com/Kilgray/media/Download/Guides/Hunspell_Dictionaries_updated.pdf

Afraid I can't help you with the other things though.

But, even if I use Trados more than MemoQ, I think MemoQ are probably easier to speak to about these sort of issues. I like Trados a lot but MemoQ seem to be more present.


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
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Off-topic - I don't! Jul 22, 2016

CafeTran Training wrote:
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
I use memoQ about 10-12 hours a day

How do you manage to stay focussed and fit, if you don't mind me asking?

Well, I sometimes doubt I do! I am not particularly fit, but I am lucky to have good health in general, apart from occasional back problems. As for keeping focused, I just do my best. There is no trick, really. I just try to make varied work more than working on a single job for hours on end. I switch jobs frequently if I can.


 
John Fossey
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Canada
Local time: 15:50
Member (2008)
French to English
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Optimising RAM use by MemoQ Jul 22, 2016

I had somewhat similar problems until I did three things:

- upgraded from 8GB RAM to 16GB RAM
- close MemoQ occasionally, maybe once a day, and of course at night
- make sure I'm using the 64-bit version

Windows 10 has a peculiar way of using RAM. Previous versions of Windows used a page file - so if RAM use is too high, it would swap chunks of least-used data out of RAM and onto the disk drive. This slowed the machine slightly but meant that RAM use was k
... See more
I had somewhat similar problems until I did three things:

- upgraded from 8GB RAM to 16GB RAM
- close MemoQ occasionally, maybe once a day, and of course at night
- make sure I'm using the 64-bit version

Windows 10 has a peculiar way of using RAM. Previous versions of Windows used a page file - so if RAM use is too high, it would swap chunks of least-used data out of RAM and onto the disk drive. This slowed the machine slightly but meant that RAM use was kept optimal.

Windows 10 apparently still uses some paging, but also depends on zipping sections of data stored in RAM that are not being much used, which takes less space and is much faster than paging to the disk drive. However, as the work day goes on, the RAM seems to get filled with data that is no longer in use, especially noticeable with applications that are RAM-intensive, such as MemoQ. When you close MemoQ, all the extra data related to it is cleared from RAM.

Most 64-bit computers can take much more RAM than they are shipped with. I put in the maximum my computer could take - 16GB - and noticed an instant increase in speed for MemoQ.

To check which version of MemoQ you are using, check the process in Task Manager. If it says "MemoQ" it's 64-bit, if it's "MemoQ32" you are running the 32 bit version, which is much slower in Windows 10. If this is the case, find the 64-bit version (mine is at C:\Program Files (x86)\Kilgray\memoQ-2015\MemoQ.exe) and change your starting shortcuts to point to this file instead of the 32-bit file.

Now MemoQ runs like the wind, after I made these changes.

Edit: I should add that I have a desktop and laptop and made the same changes to both. Don't go by the amount of RAM the computer is sold with, they put in as little as they can get away with and still make a sale!

[Edited at 2016-07-22 19:46 GMT]
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memoQ - a rant






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