How to speed up OpenOffice

From the "if we really thought about it we would have been able to figure this out on our own" department comes a handy tip for speeding up OpenOffice.org -- by increasing its memory use.

The open source Microsoft Office alternative is great if you're looking for a low cost word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application. But it takes so long to load up, especially if you don't enable the quick start application.

Here's how to cut down OpenOffice.org's startup time:

1. Start OpenOffice (it doesn't matter which application you load, Calc, Impress, or Writer will all work)
2. Click Tools>Options
3. Select Java menu and uncheck "Use a Java runtime environment"
4. Select the Memory Tab and change the following options:

• Number of steps: 30
• Use for Open Office: 128
• Memory per Object: 20
• Number of Objects: 20

Next time you start an OpenOffice.org application it should open much more quickly. But it will also eat up more memory. If you have an older computer with less than 1GB of RAM, you might want to just live with a slow load time. Or buy more memory.

[via gHacks]

Tags: memory, openoffice.org, opensource, ram, speed, tips