Loading OpenOffice applications

[dgdiecidue]

Is there any way to speed up the loading of the applications in the Open Office suite? It takes so much longer to load writer than it does to load Microsoft Word or Word Perfect. Why is that?

[squenson]

Why is that? Because the two products are different and MS Office has more efficient code as it is meant to run on only one Operating System while the same code for OOo is used for Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.

To speed up the launch of any OOo application -- in fact OOo is ONE program which can edit multiple types of documents -- make sure that you load QuickLoader when you switch on your PC. You will find this option in Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Memory and select the last checkbox.

[dgdiecidue]

Thanks. It works like a charm. I didn't realize till reading your reply that I should be launching open office from the systray, rather than from the desktop shortcut.

[squenson]

Once QuickStarter is active, you can launch the application either with the systray or with the desktop shortcut. If I am not wrong, quikstarter loads soffice.exe and soffice.bin into memory, and therefore the launch of a specific application is much faster. But, as there is never a real free lunch, your boot time will increase by 30 seconds or so...

[AndrewZ]

But, as there is never a real free lunch, your boot time will increase by 30 seconds or so...

Unless your computer is > ~8 (?) years old, the difference of using the Quickstarter should not affect Windows startup by 30 seconds. That's too high. For related numbers, see the article "Is OpenOffice.org Getting Faster?". On my computer described there, a cold start is not more than 6 seconds. Also, that's on Linux, and there's a few things that may make OOo start faster on Windows---but that's for a future article.