Is OpenOffice.org Bloatware?

PC world ^ | Harry McCracken

[postaldave]

I've had mostly positive things to say about the free OpenOffice.org suite, so in the interest of equal time, here's a link to an interesting ZDNet blog item (via Scobleizer) which looks at the speed and resource requirements of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org. It's far from exhaustive--the numbers reported relate only to launching the applications and opening a spreadsheet--but it shows OpenOffice.org as being far more memory- and CPU-hungry than the Microsoft suite.

[postaldave]

i have found OOo works well on my fast computer but my slower sub-1mhz computers can run MSoffice much better. the fast computer also has a gig of memory so that might be why. odd thing, linux is suppose to run faster on older computers. most of the larger distros actually are slower the XP on the older computers but faster are the newer computers. i see most of the open source stuff going through the same growing pains that MS did. that's my thoughts and i'm sticking with it.(smiles)

[flashbunny]

sniff
sniff

[js1138]

I have no interest in flame wars, but I've updated a number of 800 mhz computers to XP and find it runs faster than '98. Plenty fast enough for any business apps.

[postaldave]

do you bunny rabbits and kitties?

[flashbunny]

Two reasons:

MS has access to the inner workings of the OS that open office does not.

Windows has 'launch agents' (the dreaded OSA was around 5 years ago, not sure what it is now) that run all the time from start up and make starting word and running applications faster. The trade off is that those things are (or at least have been) memory and resource hogs while sitting there doing nothing.

[Cicero]

I prefer WordPerfect for my writing. But I also have MSOffice on my computers because it's more widely used.

It seems to me that Open Office is mostly for Microsoft haters.

[postaldave]

did they have a clean copy of 98?

i work on computers on the side and i have found that most 98 and XP speed problems were installed by compaq and HP and others. once you installed a clean MS disc the speeds picked up a great deal.

[B Knotts]

Just signed up to say that, eh?

[postaldave]

is your little buddy bush2000 back?

[B Knotts]

Microsoft Office doesn't run very well on Linux.

And it's a bit more expensive.

[Cicero]

Yes, it is expensive, especially since I don't much use it. But I find that if I have to email an article to an editor, most of them can only open an MS Word file.

They could open a WordPerfect file if they had the right converters installed, but unfortunately most people aren't capable of figuring that out.

[postaldave]

lol, umm nevermind.

[MikefromOhio]

LOL

yeah but in his original form LOL

[B Knotts]

Well, that's the point of OpenOffice...it does a fairly decent job opening/saving MS Office documents.

1.x was a bit off on MS documents that were at all complex. I'm looking forward to seeing the improvements in that area in 2.x.

I run Linux on all my computers, so MS Office isn't an option.

[Northern Alliance]

But I find that if I have to email an article to an editor, most of them can only open an MS Word file.

Open Office saves in Word format. You can even set it to do so by default.

[ThreePuttinDude]

postaldave, I have a question for you on XP.

I just bought a Gateway with XP Media 2005. Is there any thing
I should be wary of? I'm pretty much a novice with OS. I've
been a 98 user since 98. I decided to get the thing to get
screen captures. Hope I didnt make a mistake.

Any info would be appreciated.

[B Knotts]

BTW, as far as Linux on old computers, it really boils down to what you run for your GUI, apps, etc.

I am typing this on an ancient dual Celeron 333 with a mere 256 MB RAM. It's slow, but not intolerably so. I run Debian with KDE 3.

Yet, I am able to get by, even with an entire separate session for my son on running another virtual display.

If I wanted it to be faster, though, I could use a less resource intensive desktop environment (e.g., Window Maker), which is quite fast even on an old machine like this one.

[postaldave]

1. download GBpvr http://www.gbpvr.com/ it's freeware and much better then the native media software.

2.i'm not up on gateway so i really don't know. did it come with a XP install disc? that is the big thing i have againts the major computer makers, they load the backup onto the hard drive.(BAD)

you can't go wrong updating to xp though, it is MUCH better then 98.

3.run msconfig and check what is running in startup, that is another thing the big boys do to screw up XP.

[postaldave]

i'm playing around with Puppy Linux right now and I like it on my old box. however, it doesn't have the full samba thing so i'm having trouble trying to get it to play with all the MS machines on the network.