OpenOffice.org slower than MS Office?

And a memory hog at that? Considering the benchmarking test performed by ZDNet's George Ou here and here, the numbers look bad for OO.o.

Why is this so? Ou points to unoptimized code, and Sun's propensity for bloat. At first glance, this looks like typical MS FUD, but if one looks closer, one realizes that this is a prevailing problem not only for open source but also for proprietary software as well.

Yesterday, I presented before the Institute's operations committee a brief overview of OO.o, and its similarities to MS Office. I pointed to the fact that shifting will be less painful because of the similar interface, and the (hopefully) seamless rendering of MS documents formats in OO.o.

The presentation went well, and the results of our recent migration to OO.o has so far been encouraging. But will performance be an issue for our users? I hope not. Given the fact that they've been using it for two weeks now without complaint (except for a few questions about keyboard shortcuts, etc. — trivial, really), I think I can rest a bit knowing that migration will be smooth sailing.

My optimism is hardly scientific, of course, but I'm after usability above everything else. RAM and CPU hardly matter for my users so long as things get done. And with less costs to boot.

The performance battles between OO.o and MS Office may look bad at first glance, but that is to be expected. Let them wage their battles, I say. We're sticking with OO.o, thank you very much, and that's what gives me the fuzzy warm feeling in my belly.