speeding up OpenOffice?

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:16:10 -0500
   From: "Martin Owens" <doctormo at gmail.com>

   Note, I know machines who have reached their maximum RAM capability
   at 512 or even 256MB, it's also very important to know what kind to
   install, as it's no picnic there either and the older DDRs seem to
   cost much more now they're not being made any more.

The Inspiron 1100 is a relatively new machine (relative, at any rate,
to my Inspiron 8000 and 8200).  The 8000 -- based on the Pentium 3 --
tops out at 512 MB; the 8200 officially tops out at 1 GB but
unofficially at 2 GB (I have 1.5 GB and it has no problems).

The 1100 is an entry level machine, but it can surely take more than
256 MB.  I would be very surprised if it can't take 1 GB.  Look on
eBay.

   On 17/01/07, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
   >
   > My two suggestions:
   >
   > 1) Try AbiWord.  It might not work (I've never used it), but it might be
   >    less bloated.
   >
   > 2) Get more memory.  256M really isn't enough to do lots of stuff.  Once
   > you
   >    get firefox running, you're toast.  Starting OOo on top of that and
   > you're
   >    into swap-hell.  I'd recommend you upgrade to 1GB ram.  A DIMM will
   > cost
   >    you about $200 (or less!) and you'll be much happier.
   >
   > -derek
   >
   > Quoting Seth Gordon <sethg at ropine.com>:
   >
   > > My wife routinely curses OpenOffice, because of the time it takes to
   > > load and the way it brings the rest of her system to a screeching halt.
   > > (This is an Inspiron 1100 with a 2.4GHz Celeron and 256 MB of RAM
   > > running Ubuntu "Dapper Drake".)  Is there some trick, some
   > > --disable-cruft option that I can set when recompiling the whole thing,
   > > that would make the experience less painful for her?  Is there a
   > > lighter-weight word processor that is good at reading and writing the MS
   > > Word files that the rest of the universe insists on sending to her?  (In
   > > practice, she's only using that part of OO; I already installed gnumeric
   > > so she doesn't have to deal with the OpenOffice spreadsheet program.)

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