Dear Ross, I agree with much of what you write. Still, to the degree that public perception of OOo as bloated and slow is justified, I think these problems should be addressed in the course of development work on the programme - small is often beautiful, even if RAM costs are down ! As to OOo as an alternative to Microsoft Office, I should like to see the former so easy to use, graphically attractive, and reliable that I could recommend it to the pensioners to whom I teach elementary computer knowledge. One problem, of course, is that Microsoft seems to be trying to make interoperability a thing of the past by patenting its XML code, in order to lock us all in to its dear and insecure software with so-called «licenses» in which the consumer has practically no rights at all over the purchased product. Still, I can't help wondering if the real issue will not turn out to be the choice between computer-based alternatives like OOo, on the one hand, and web-based alternatives like Google's docs & spreadsheets, on the other. If I had my druthers I'd like to see a trend toward greater and greater interoperability between these two systems, so that a user could choose that which was the more convenient for him or her in any given situation....
Henri
