First of all, if you haven't got
OpenOffice, I recommend downloading it.
It's a free full featured office suite that rivals MS Office.
IMHO, it's better in most ways the only thing it lacks is a Publisher alternative, but it has extra applications.
Anyway, enough marketing hype, check the site for the full list of features etc.
I used to find that it was extremely slow, both opening the application, opening files, and at other times.
If you feel the same, read on.
Open up any OpenOffice application, and choose Tools --> Options.
Then, under General, go to Memory.
Set the cache for OpenOffice itself to something around 64Mb, and the memory per object to around 3-5Mb.
The defaults are ridiculously low, which slows the whole thing down.
Also, go to Java and disable it if you don't use it in OpenOffice - it takes an age to load.
It takes a few openings and closings of OpenOffice to feel the difference, but for me it's been quite substantial.
Feel free to experiment with the other options too, and play around with the memory options - users with more RAM will want to set it higher for more performance, users with less RAM will want to set it a bit lower to conserve RAM.
At least raise it from the defaults though, as they're far too low for decent speed.
Hope this helps some people out.
Calum.
