IMac 17" Core Duo acting slower than it should-

My father has a first generation iMac 17" Core Duo. It should be really fast. (At least compared to my PMG4 MDD..) I think it is rather fast, but sometimes it is really slow. Spinning ball while changing application, spinning ball while opening applications, spinning ball while performing operations in applications.. However, when I checked last night, the CPU was typically used about 20-30%. About 5 MiB free RAM, and about 100 MiB inactive.
I get the impression that the computer is way faster before the Office suite is launched. Dad is always running Entourage, and often both Word and Excel as well.
Is it likely that this is the explaination? That the computer is slower when an Office app is running? MS states that it "should run well under Rosetta", but on the other hand, they're known for their BS.

Yes, that could very well be the problem, especially
if the computer only has 512 MB of RAM.
It has. Though I find it a little bit peculiar that it can have as much as 100+ MiB inactive RAM and still be slow.. I thought inactive RAM was RAM that could be re-used, like free?
PowerMac G4 MDD, iBook G4 12"   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

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