Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

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MikeHunt
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Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by MikeHunt »

Hi guys

Is it just me or is open office so much slower the MS office?
Why is this? I would have thought MS office to be a much larger application than OO.

Im not here to complain, as i think its a great application, its just that it takes so long to start up.
Opening a simple word document shouldnt take this long?
Is there any way of speeding it up?

Im currently using OOVer 3.0 on WinXP

Thanks
OOo 3.0.X on Ms Windows XP
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Villeroy
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Re: Why is Open Office so SLOW??

Post by Villeroy »

Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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lararefaeli
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Re: Why is Open Office so SLOW??

Post by lararefaeli »

Hi MikeHunt

This year I bought a Viao Laptop and an Acer Desktop, both had MS-Office 2007 trial version. I uninstalled the trial version of MS-Office 2007 as it was pathetically slow on Vista Home Premium on both the systems. Now I am proud user of OpenOffice 2.4 and 3.0. OpenOffice is good indeed, in fact it is good enough for most people.

I think in your computer has a virus that's why your OpenOffice become slow. You should install good Anti-virus in your Application.
rf65
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Re: Why is Open Office so Slow?

Post by rf65 »

Hi,
from a german forum ( http://www.tweakpc.de/news/8562/openoff ... hleunigen/) I can send you these tips:

in "options- working memory" you should set the graphic-cache from 64 MB to 128 MB and the next "memory per object" from 8 MB to 32 MB.
If you don´t need java, go to the javapart and deactivate the java- option.

We had very good results (up to 2 sec. faster).

Best regards
OOo 3.11 with Win XP SP3
bugmenot111
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Re: Why is Open Office so Slow?

Post by bugmenot111 »

Its slow because there is nobody to pay to the developers (who develops this kind of application software).

It looks like SUN will close whole office and their developers will work in Microsoft!
OpenOffice 3.1 on Windows Vista
bugmenot111
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Re: Why is Open Office so SLOW??

Post by bugmenot111 »

lararefaeli wrote:Hi MikeHunt

This year I bought a Viao Laptop and an Acer Desktop, both had MS-Office 2007 trial version. I uninstalled the trial version of MS-Office 2007 as it was pathetically slow on Vista Home Premium on both the systems. Now I am proud user of OpenOffice 2.4 and 3.0. OpenOffice is good indeed, in fact it is good enough for most people.

I think in your computer has a virus that's why your OpenOffice become slow. You should install good Anti-virus in your Application.
I think you have never used Microsoft Office, you can install it and compare both of them and you will have kind of knowledge that free things will never good in life!
OpenOffice 3.1 on Windows Vista
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keme
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Re: Why is Open Office so SLOW??

Post by keme »

bugmenot111 wrote:
lararefaeli wrote:Hi MikeHunt

This year I bought a Viao Laptop and an Acer Desktop, both had MS-Office 2007 trial version. I uninstalled the trial version of MS-Office 2007 as it was pathetically slow on Vista Home Premium on both the systems. Now I am proud user of OpenOffice 2.4 and 3.0. OpenOffice is good indeed, in fact it is good enough for most people.

I think in your computer has a virus that's why your OpenOffice become slow. You should install good Anti-virus in your Application.
I think you have never used Microsoft Office, you can install it and compare both of them
I did. If for nothing else, at least to prove a point to the school administration (I work at a school, and the municipality administration insists that schools and their students be using MS Office.)

On Windows (XP pro SP3), MS Office 2003 applications start faster than their OpenOffice.org counterpart. The difference amounts to perhaps 5 seconds on first start, and around 1 second on subsequent starts (when modules are already in memory, I guess). For startup speed, MS Office wins with a clear margin, but not overwhelming. File loading is also apparently faster in MS Office, but only marginally so (10-15% difference).

On Mac OS-X 10.5, there is no clear difference. Timings vary by a half second or less, and as I timed the "user experience" using a manual stopwatch (instead of using a software timer to time the actual process startup), those differences may just as easily have been introduced by me as by the software. A draw.

On Linux (OpenSuSE 11.2), MS Office does not start. Word and Powerpoint viewers install and run under WINE, but they're generally a pain to use, besides they are not office tools, only viewers. The full apps will not work on WINE. OOo wins on "walk over".

On Solaris, MS Office does not start. Haven't even managed to run Microsoft's viewers. OOo wins on "walk over".

Haven't tried any of the BSDs, but I guess results would be similar to the Linux/Solaris tests.

I don't know why MS Office will not run on WINE, and other people with other computers may have different experiences. Feel free to share :)
bugmenot111 wrote:... and you will have kind of knowledge that free things will never good in life!
Which means ... what?
Apache OO 4.1.12 and LibreOffice 7.5, mostly on Ms Windows 10
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Villeroy
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Re: Why is Open Office so Slow?

Post by Villeroy »

keme wrote:
bugmenot111 wrote:... and you will have kind of knowledge that free things will never good in life!
Which means ... what?
Home fucking kills prostitution.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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floris v
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by floris v »

Home fucking kills prostitution.
Never gonna work. Even in the Netherlands, where people are rather penny wise, prostitution still flourishes. The men who go the prostitutes just don't have a life. However, I'm not really sure that paid sex is any better than free sex, or any worse. I'm not even sure if home sex can always be considered as free. :lol:
I think you have never used Microsoft Office, you can install it and compare both of them and you will have kind of knowledge that free things will never good in life!
I can see that you have never worked with the free downloads of Delphi - they totally rocked my socks. ;)
OpenOffice 4.1.11 on Ubuntu; LibreOffice 6.4 on Linux Mint, LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Ubuntu
If your problem has been solved or your question has been answered, please edit the first post in this thread and add [Solved] to the title bar.
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RossPJohnson
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by RossPJohnson »

MikeHunt wrote:Hi guys

Is it just me or is open office so much slower the MS office?
Why is this? I would have thought MS office to be a much larger application than OO.

Im not here to complain, as i think its a great application, its just that it takes so long to start up.
Opening a simple word document shouldnt take this long?
Is there any way of speeding it up?
This post is late in coming I know, but it's been a while since I did any OOo advocacy, and some recent experience with Office at work gives me a need to vent an opinion as well.

Have you timed OOo opening an ODF (.odt) document?
OOo opening a word document I imagine will first translate it into ODF, if only for display purposes, and translate it back into .doc when saving.

While not suggesting there isn't still plenty of improvement to be made to OOo, with most applications size is not the reason they take time to start because usually only those components that are needed will be loaded. Word shares a lot of code with other apps and parts of the system that you may already have running or are loaded when you login (and why Windows logins are extremely slow IMO) so the OOo quickstarter attempts to do something similar for OOo. But I'm assuming you load the quickstarter on login, unless you chose not to.

Generally and especially for larger documents I find that, once started, OOo is so much faster to work with because of it's style-based editing workflow. I've also found other more mundane differences that make Word (version 2003 with all updates AFAIK) slower to work with. For example, even with the help of a Word savvy user, there appears not to be a way to prevent tables from splitting across page breaks, which is a simple attribute setting in OOo, thus in Word I need to use tricks like insert manual page breaks and, therefore, to check document formatting every time I share. The pain is so much less with OOo that, even at work where Word is the standard for document sharing, I will use OOo to create, edit and maintain and only convert to and adjust in Word when I need to.

On other fronts, at work I often have to use Visio but find it is so buggy that I often prefer to use OOo Draw instead and convert to PDF or WMF for sharing or inserting into those Word documents I referred to above.
OpenOffice 3.2 on Windows Vista
Daniel Breslauer
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by Daniel Breslauer »

This is precisely my issue with OO as well.

On my company laptop, I use Office 2007/2010 (upgraded to 2010 two weeks ago) and OO 3.2.0, on Windows 7.

Office 2007/2010 just opens so much faster than OO. There is, regrettably, a serious difference. I would use OO much more often if it were faster. I only use it for *personal* documents: I use Office for work, OO for personal/private affairs (since it's free and I have it on my other, personal machines as well).

I must say speed *has* improved. There is certainly an improvement now compared to the version I used like a year ago.
OOo 2.4.X on MS Windows Vista + XP SP2
fedtho
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Re: Why is Open Office so Slow?

Post by fedtho »

rf65 wrote:Hi,
from a german forum ( http://www.tweakpc.de/news/8562/openoff ... hleunigen/) I can send you these tips:

in "options- working memory" you should set the graphic-cache from 64 MB to 128 MB and the next "memory per object" from 8 MB to 32 MB.
If you don´t need java, go to the javapart and deactivate the java- option.

We had very good results (up to 2 sec. faster).

Best regards
Holy COW :shock:

This comes nearly a year after your post BUT you deserve the credit!

I haven't even been to that german site yet (and I speak German, so that wouldn't be a problem in itself).

I just made the three tweaks you suggest and - on a Mac with OSX Tiger anyway (two versions behind the newest) - I went from anywhere between 5 and 10 seconds to almost-instantly in terms of opening time !!!

LOUD CHEERS to you, rf65
:D :D :D
OpenOffice 3.2.0 on Apple OSX 10.4.11 (Tiger), PowerMac Quad G5 (4 x 2.5 Ghz)
bugmenot111
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by bugmenot111 »

heheh, indeed! not as radical improvement as you say (on XP), but noticeable to be sure.
kudos to rf65...
...question arises, why doesn't OO have this in its default settings?
OpenOffice 3.1 on Windows Vista
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jza
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by jza »

Interesting post on the Spanish forum, most of the screenshots are understandable since soffice is the same and the consumption memory windows are also common.

http://user.services.openoffice.org/es/ ... 308#p11308
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coonatto
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by coonatto »

I am running OO 3.3.0 on a machine running Windows XP, and on a laptop running Vista.
I find OO is very very very slow! I have done the "tweeks" suggested to memory size etc, but to initially open a .odt file (4 pages long) takes the XP machine about 4 minutes - yes that's minutes.

My regular word processor is WordPerfect 8 - yes I know it's the version Noah used - but it works great, is quick, and has better features than OO, such as the oh so easy headers and footers which OO finds so hard to handle.

Then today I get this message to "register" OO 3.3.4 (I think that was it). I have not asked to update - so why the message?? - which prevents me using OO until I go through the "registration" process.

I would like to use OO - I'm not into supporting Bill Gates - BUT if it remains so slow it will be hard to justify.
open office 3.3.0
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by Hagar Delest »

There is no registration process with new version. Make sure you have a genuine version of Apache OpenOffice. You can remove the current version and install the one you can download from the official web site (see link bottom right of this page).

You may have to reset your OpenOffice user profile, configuration files from the former version might corrupt the new profile.

If no change, are there pictures in your document? Could they been linked to online places instead of being embedded?
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RoryOF
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by RoryOF »

There is something seriously wrong with your system or your OpenOffice installation. On my current computer (not state of the art! vintage 2004, rescued from a dumpster) it takes OpenOffice 8 seconds to start up and load a 4 page document with diagrams. A 330 page text document loads in about 15 seconds across the network from the house server.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
Bill
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by Bill »

coonatto wrote:Then today I get this message to "register" OO 3.3.4 (I think that was it). I have not asked to update - so why the message?? - which prevents me using OO until I go through the "registration" process.
Have you checked your hard drive? This message will appear when OOo doesn't find the user profile on the hard drive, usually during the first start of OOo 3.3.0 after it is installed, or after the user resets the user profile. While registration is not mandatory to use OOo 3.3.0 (just select "I do not want to register"), completing the "process" is. AOO 3.4.0 developed by Apache has no registration process.
dlints
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Re: Why is OpenOffice.org so Slow?

Post by dlints »

I am using OO4.1.0 on a slate with windows 8 and it has been glacial - not only to start, but to save and other operations to.
I followed the suggestion to change the graphics cache as our German friend mentioned and saw that you can activate an OO quickstart when you start up your machine!
so far so good!
OpenOffice 4.1.0 on Windows 8
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