OpenOffice.org 2.0 : presentation and test

Writer is a word processor, similar to Word, allowing you to create any type of office document.

For those that don’t know this software, then no need to worry. If you know Word, then you are already going to be immediately comfortable with Writer as the interface and functions are almost identical to those offered by Microsoft, as you can see from the screen capture below.

Word 2003


 

As you can see, the interface and options are almost identical when creating a new document.

In this file, I won’t be presenting the new features that are available in Writer compared to its preceding version that was offered in OpenOffice.org 1.x. We will try and present the advantages and disadvantages of Writer when compared directly to Microsoft Word, the history of its engine and any planned upgrades.

Loading Time: One of the biggest criticisms by users of OOo is regarding the amount of time it takes to load Writer, a lot slower when compared to Word. I have performed some tests to try and convince you….otherwise ;)

We have analyzed the time it takes to load Writer and Word after defragmenting our hard disk drive.

• Word 2003: The first time we start Word, it is quicker to open, in approximately 2 seconds. When restarting this later, the time is closer to 1 second, making it nearly instantaneous.
• Writer: The first time that we start Writer, just after the restart of our Windows session, we saw the OpenOffice.org logo appear and still had to wait approximately 6 to 7 seconds before being able to type our text. Next, if we closed Writer and restarted the program, then the time was closer to 2 seconds.
  

So as you can see, without any doubt, Word starts a lot quicker then Writer, but the difference is at most 5-6 seconds which doesn’t pose any “insurmountable” problems for most of us!

Memory Use: Let’s now compare memory use, which is an important consideration if we are on older hardware, for example with only 128MB or of RAM.

Writer takes up approximately 37MB of your memory when it has been started, in the form of two Windows processes (soffice.exe and soofice.bin).

In comparison, when starting Word, it takes up approximately 11MB in memory (winword.exe process), but quickly rises to 28MB when we have only just started typing some text.

If we now insert some images into our document, the difference between Writer and Word is none, with 47MB for Writer against 48MB for Word.

So in normal use, the memory use is basically identical between the two word processors making this not a viable criterion when choosing which program to use.