Comments on: OpenOffice more bloated than Microsoft Office?

By: Just_Passing_By

Just_Passing_By — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:14:17 +0000

My understanding of why OpenOffice seems bloated is kind of the same as the comments by kubota, Sean, and nap.

For the sake of argument, lets assume that Microsoft Word is more bloated than OpenOffice. Microsoft Word’s apparent speed is just because its bloat is part of the operating system, so these resouces have to load anyway. OpenOffice, on the other hand, has to load all of its program recources on top of the operating system bloat, so it makes the system load heavier overall.

So while Microsoft Word is more inefficient and bloated overall, the program resources that have to be loaded into the memory on top of the operating system bloat is lower, so Word happens to perform better overall.

By: nevda

nevda — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:51:43 +0000

You can speed up the load time of open office by allocating more memory to it. Open Writer and go to tools > options > select memory and adjust the settings. Mine is at 128mb for “use for openoffice.org and 20mb per object. This helped me a lot.

By: Rohan

Rohan — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:29:09 +0000

Huh? Really? I had a laptop with Open office in it. Well specs; processor: intel celeron 2GHz, RAM: 512 MB, OS: Ubuntu Linux. Open office work just superb. It opens in a few seconds and does not drag down my computer. So for to me its a great replacement to the Microsoft office.

By: kubota

kubota — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:42:32 +0000

It is because MS Office plants something in the Startup menu, so when Windows load it also loads some MS Office cores so when you open up Word it will load fast at the expense of your Windows booting up.

Later versions of OpenOffice also made its own Quickstart on the startup to make it also start faster.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:03:17 +0000

The problem is that when you open up MS Word that is all you are opening up… when you open up OoO you are opening up all of the programs that are part of the suite (it is how it is designed)… Try opening up the equivalent Office programs and compare them all then…

By: nap

nap — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 15:50:53 +0000

Resource hog? Yes. Bloated? I don’t think so. It just so happens that Microsoft Office is made by the same company which Windows came from (duh, who doesn’t know that), and as such, MS Office can fully utilize any available technology which Windows has. But that is not the case for OpenOffice. Oo has to use whatever is legally available to them, veering away from patented or MS-exclusive technology.

Nanghuhula lang pala ako, BTW.

By: Rufus Jenkins

Rufus Jenkins — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:49:09 +0000

Faster and faster systems are not a solution for bloatware. If we play that game, we will end up with 5 Ghz systems that struggle with opening e-mail. My major gripe with Microsoft Office 2003 is the loading time -- I will give OOo 2.0 a try and see how it compares. Rufus J, SystemDisc Linux CDs shop.

By: bacchus_3

bacchus_3 — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:31:29 +0000

I have to add too…the test data George showed on his blog on zdnet can’t be duplicated. So I’m not sure how his setup is. For users who want to know more of how OOo2 really fit their needs…you can download it and try – it’s free.

By: bacchus_3

bacchus_3 — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:10:31 +0000

I know the problems of OOo on resource handling…but it’s been doing well with OOo2 out. I noticed it runs faster on LInux though…
For those who wants speed without concern on cost, go for MS Office.
For those who wants a totally free office suite, go for OOo. Besides, development for OOo hasn’t stopped and I’m sure optimizing OOo is on top of the develoeprs list for the next releases.
(I also agree with the Java fix mentioned by raincontreras).
I’m using OOo on my laptop and so far I don’t have problems with it…I’m satisfied with the speed.

By: clair

clair — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 06:46:26 +0000

The recent OOo is pretty ok but then again, I almost always just use Emacs or Nano or Gedit to save my text files Emacs has word count and spellcheck anyway…
If I could learn Latex, I guess it would be good for me =)