Lightweight Office Suite

[Steve Lamb]

On Thu, June 12, 2008 3:26 pm, Graham Todd wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:19:10 -0400
> Scott <slewin at bmts.com> wrote:
>> 	as a home user I use a spread sheet and word processor on
>> occasion, but when I use them I only need the most common features.
>> Using open office feels like using a Ferrari when all I need is a
>> Echo.  Does anybody know of a good, lighter, spreadsheet and word
>> processor program out there.

    Sometimes when all the rental place has are Ferrari's and they're
renting at Echo rates, why complain?  ;)


> Abiword is fairly lightweight yet is a full featured word processor in
> the classic mould.
[ snippage ]
> Abiword would definitely be my alternative choice as a word processor.

    The rest of your advice I either agree with or do not have enough
experience to question.  However on this one I would want to give one
caveat for anyone looking to replace OOo Writer with Abiword.  Abiword
looks lightweight but it doesn't feel lightweight.

    I have a modest sized writing project that I have confined to writing on
my aged laptop.  A Dell Latitude CPx w/256Mb of RAM, a 667Mhz PIII and
~30Gb of HD.  Hey, it was lightning fast about 10 years ago.  Anyway,
after getting frustrated with the notion of shutting everything else
down to make room for OOo Writer I played around with other word
processors.  Abiword came highly recommended and it was the first I
tried.

    On my project which, at the time, was all of ~26 pages, Abiword took
longer to update the screen, lagged behind my typing and crashed at
least once.  This was just with basic edits in prose.  No fancy
formatting other than indent-first-line and some italics.  IE, about
what I am using to write this email presently.  I found it unworkable.

    On the other hand it loads faster than OOo Writer and on tiny 1-2 page
projects it certainly took up less resources and did not exhibit any of
the slowdown shown in the above project.

    In the end I shifted back to OOo Writer.  I may not like it for a
variety of reasons but being able to be productive with warts beats
pretty and unproductive.  ;)


-- 
Steve Lamb