Why is OpenOffice slow?

[Loïc Martin]

Eberhard Roloff a écrit :
> Even if it were 30 seconds, what
> does this say in relation to an eight or twelve hour workday?
> Especiallly if we consider that the guy in front of
> the keyboard is by far the slowest component of the computer,
> at least as long as we discuss the usage of a full blown Office
> Suite.
>
> regards
> Eberhard 
Because some people have a laptop and shut it down / start it 20 times a 
day.

Or because they care for their environment (lots of towns still have 
fuel power plants, and nuclear is no better) and prefer to close their 
computer when they won't use it for the next 30 minutes.

Because even with 1g of memory I my computer slows down to a crawl when 
I edit heavy graphic files, and since I do different things 
simultaneously (like when saving/converting a file takes a few minutes, 
I tend to do other work, often with OO) I prefer to close OO each time 
to speed up things a little (it's not related to the overall time I lose 
by having to restart OO - it's just that when you're drawing, having the 
system slow you down is a sure way to waste your

Because some don't consider their computer should waste their time as 
much (they're suppose to *save* it - nobody said the purpose of an 
application was to slow you down). 20 times of firing an OS that takes 1 
minute 20 seconds, then 10 seconds after login, then 30 seconds to fire 
up OO, that's already 40 minutes I lose everyday. Mind you, I'm really 
considering Gentoo at the moment :)

Because responsiveness is one of the most important part of an easy GUI 
(c. Dave Hayne "GUI is a real-time problem"). When an user see the 
effects to his actions instantaneously, it make the GUI simpler - when 
he clicks on something and don't see anything happening, he's likely to 
wonder what doesn't work on his OS.

That last point is Gnome's biggest failure (hopefully : at the moment): 
you actually don't make the GUI simpler if by "improving" the desktop 
you lose in responsiveness.

Oh, and waiting 30 seconds to see the effect of an action is going to 
teach our users bad habits that can be harmful. In Windows, people click 
on files/applications and don't notice when nothing happens (or when it 
happens after a long time of having slowed the computer to a crawl). A 
great conditioned response to use if you're in the spyware/virus business.

Do we really want our user base to find it normal when they try to start 
a program and the machine slows for 30 seconds?

And like I said, even if responsiveness is not that much a problem for a 
developer, for most other uses (drawing, music, etc...) it's crucial.