Open Office claimed "superior"

I've carped now and then about the Linux user experience ( An Honest look at Linux on the desktop), but here's someone who says Open Office is better than Microsoft Office.

Unfortunately, he doesn't tell us whether or not he's running it on Linux or Microsoft, and, perhaps more unfortunately, that might be a critical difference. Every time I've tried Open Office on Linux, it's felt "muddy"- I feel like I'm fighting sludge. I did install it on a Windows laptop and was happier with it, but that won't help Linux gain ground on the desktop.

There are worse places to run it though: try it on a Mac. X-Windows on my iBook is sluggish to begin with, so much so that I have to really, really need to run some X software to get me into it, and that's a rare occurrence. Put Open Office into an already bad environment and it's too painful for me. There will be a native OS X version someday, but it's been pushed way off into never-never land.

Update 2009: I use OpenOffice on my Mac now.. much improved!

To be fair, I haven't tried it in a while now. It may have improved by leaps and bounds, and a pleasant experience may await me if I'd just take the time to go get the latest release. I'd like to believe that, really I would. But as vi is all the "word processor" I ordinarily need, I have no compelling reason to do so, only curiousity to drive me.

The sluggishness will probably go away with faster hardware - that's one of the bright spots in computing today: if the app is too much for the box you run today, it won't be tomorrow. Maybe my iBook is too weak to run Open Office on top of X on top of OS X, but whatever I replace it with probably won't be.. so I'll wait until then before I look at it again.

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