June 14th, 2005
Open Office vs. Microsoft Office
Open Office 2.0 (still in beta) is getting a lot of interest. For one thing, it’s free, and now from some testing reports we found, it looks like it’s also pretty streamlined compared to the reigning but bloated champ. Here are some comparisons on everything from load time, to system requirements, to application speed. Verdict: Worth a Download.
OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office?
By Matt13
The first thing I did was to install OO.o It took only 7.5 minutes and took up 164MB (94.82 according to Windows). It did not require a restart. It has been over a year since I installed MS Office, but I think it had to be restarted and that it takes up 450MB (according to Windows (the size in the “Add or Remove Programs listing)).
I made sure that the auto-loader was not running for either program because it seems wasteful to keep them in memory if I do not use them often. Next I tested the speed of the applications themselves by simply opening and closing them 5 times and finding the average.
Interestingly the first startup (if the application is not in RAM) is much slower. This is because of Windows, not the applications. Here, Writer was 3 times faster than Word.
I also tested the time to close the application.
Matt’s Complete Testing Report Here
Download the Beta of Open Office Here
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
Open Office vs. Microsoft Office
Open Office 2.0 (still in beta) is getting a lot of interest. For one thing, it’s free, and now from some testing reports we found, it looks like it’s also pretty streamlined compared to the reigning but bloated champ. Here are some comparisons on ever…
June 14th, 2005 at 8:57 am
Jason says:
I don’t know what kind of computer the OO tester is using, but Word opens up (1st time) on my computer in less than 4.5 seconds. A second opening of Word takes less than 1.5 seconds.
Seems to me that 31+ seconds to open Word is not Word’s problem OR Windows’ problem, but an overall super-slow system.
June 14th, 2005 at 11:12 am
Jason says:
From the tester: “My computer is relatively slow (a 2.2 GHz Celeron with 512 MB RAM and a slow drive (5400 RPM)”
No wonder it’s so slow! Intel Celery processor!
June 14th, 2005 at 11:16 am
Alice says:
I’m going see if our resident tester David Jonhston will do a real comparison. he is the benchmark king. David?
June 14th, 2005 at 11:21 am
Rob says:
I dunno … my computer is a P4 1.5GHz with 384MB RAM and Word2k3 loads (read: from click to typing) in about 10-12 seconds. And that’s WHILE running stuff like Winamp, Firefox, Gaim, Thunderbird, Steam, and several other apps. No auto-loader or pre-loader or anything like that, and it hadn’t been running since my last reboot.
I know Celeron’s aren’t exactly the snappiest processors out there, but something just doesn’t seem right about Word taking 30+ seconds to start up.
While he may not have had the resources, an ideal benchmark would have been with a clean disk image
June 14th, 2005 at 11:46 am
Michael Tam says:
Exactly. There is something very very wrong with these numbers. On my Pentium 3 1 GHz notebook with 256 MB RAM (shared with video) which should be indoubtedly slower than the tester’s computer, I can load MS Word 2003 less than 5 seconds on the first load and subsequently loads basically near instantaneous (i.e.,
June 14th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
Alice says:
Calling David Johnston!
June 14th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
yups says:
Is everyone on crack? These are load times on his system not yours, making comparisons to your own is only effective if you have OO installed and time both. Geesh, a little logic goes a long ways. I have MS office installed it’s a load hog, never timed it but it does take a considerable time to run.
June 14th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
Joe says:
This was posted on slashdot earlier (shame on you for duplicating this one Alice! I expect better
).
Regardless of whether the load times were on this guy’s system or any other user’s, from an objective standpoint, they are intensely long load times for those applications from a machine with those specifications. I would not be surprised if there is something horribly, horribly wrong with his Windows install.
As an earlier poster stated, an effective benchmark from that system would be a fresh reimaging of the drive with only those applications installed (or even better, one reimage for each application, if you’re absolutely purist). From there, you could compare benchmarks run in the same way on PCs with different processors and amounts of ram. Then, you do a seperate benchmark with the auto-loader running, being sure to examine how much longer a Windows reboot takes since the program runs on startup.
What I’m sure anyone who bothered to waste their time doing this would find is that Mr. Matt13 is
A) making a mockery of the scientific method and
B) another Microsoft hater using illegitimate data to hate on Office.
C’mon, it isn’t like there aren’t other, EXISTING problems with MS software to highlight. Why waste time creating this abomination of a study?
June 14th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
Rob says:
“These are load times on his system not yours”
And when my slower system (and Michael’s slower system) is loading Word considerably faster than his, one has to question the reliability of the benchmark. I’m no MS apologest, but let’s be realistic here…
Furthermore, the presence of OO.o really has no bearing on the load times of MS Office… the problem here is that nobody has been able to reproduce this guy’s MS Office load times…
June 14th, 2005 at 10:17 pm
tycalch says:
Interesting. I have always had a problem with slow startup and closedown of MS word - my current computer has an athlon64 and 1gb ddr and have just timed subsequent startups at 11 seconds and closedown of 7 seconds. First time startup is considerably more.
Is this normal?
June 15th, 2005 at 12:43 pm
Alice says:
I spoke with David. he just graduated from college and is busy looking for a job and so, but he said to hang tight - he will do a real comparison for us and report back here.
June 15th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Don Glessner says:
With an Athlon 3000, 1 Gig of ram, a 160 Sata Hard Drive, MS Word 2003 opens in 3 seconds and closes in less than 1, second time opens in 2 seconds same closing time
June 15th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
Jason says:
To tycalch:
There is indeed something wrong if Word takes 11 seconds to open on an AMD64 with 1GB DDR RAM. My ADM64 takes 4.0 to 4.5 seconds to open Word the 1st time, and less than 1 second on subsequent runs. Shutdown of Word on my system is less than 1/4 of a second.
You may need to troubleshoot or re-format. I find that a fresh install of XP and apps every 4 months is a healthy thing. Some think it’s excessive, some agree that it helps.
June 15th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Jason says:
Tycalch - or your hard drive is fragmented beyond reason… Try O&O Defrag free trial software.
June 15th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Bob says:
Do the Word start/load times include a virus scan? NortonAV scans everything on load which can slow things considerably.
June 15th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
Yossi says:
This is the dummiest compare i’ve seen for a long time. instead of comparing the loading time you should look at the god damn features!
June 16th, 2005 at 8:25 am
Alice says:
Yoss- David Jonhston will THE definitive comaro soon. This was all we could find out there. Shame on the big tech sites.
June 16th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
Jacqueline Rice says:
I agree with Yossi. Compare the features and the value you get.
June 16th, 2005 at 7:39 pm
Tom says:
To Jason:
> You may need to troubleshoot or re-format. I find that a fresh
> install of XP and apps every 4 months is a healthy thing. Some think
> it’s excessive, some agree that it helps.
The above statement is the main reason why I try to avoid using Windows if at all possible. An OS that requires a complete reinstall every 4 months to remain stable and responsive is pretty poor in my opinion. My time is too valuable to waste with exercises like that.
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