NeoOffice Performance Comparison

From NeoWiki

This page attempts to provide a balanced, but by no means complete, comparison of NeoOffice's performance with two comparable office suites, StarOffice/OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office, to help you make a more informed decision when evaluating office software. Some other software developers have similar comparison pages; those we are aware of are linked below.

NeoOffice 2.2.5 vs. NeoOffice 3.0 vs. OpenOffice.org 3.1 vs. Microsoft Office 2004 vs. Microsoft Office 2008

Performance Test	NeoOffice 2.2.5	NeoOffice 3.0	OpenOffice.org 3.1	MS Office 2004	MS Office 2008
General:
Price	$0.00, donation requested	$0.00, donation requested	$0.00	No longer available	$149.95 Home & Student Edition
Launch Time:
Launch time to active cursor in Writer/Word document by double-clicking on application in Finder after reboot (cold start)
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	26 seconds	24 seconds	37 seconds	27 seconds	23 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	33 seconds	32 seconds	38 seconds	10 seconds	32 seconds
Launch time to active cursor in Writer/Word document by double-clicking on application in Finder after quitting application (warm start)
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	9 seconds	7 seconds	9 seconds	7 seconds	9 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	16 seconds	14 seconds	13 seconds	5 seconds	8 seconds
Word Processor:
... with a 500,000 character document (approximately 130 pages long)
Open in Print Layout view, by dragging from Finder to closed application (warm start)
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	8 seconds	8 seconds	6 seconds	5 seconds	4 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	12 seconds	16 seconds	crashed	4 seconds	9 seconds
Open in Print Layout view, by dragging from Finder to open application
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	1 second	1 second	6 seconds	1 second	1 second
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	4 seconds	4 seconds	3 seconds	1 second	1 second
Save
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	3 seconds	3 seconds	2 seconds	3 seconds	2 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	6 seconds	6 seconds	3 seconds	2 seconds	3 seconds
Page Preview
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	4 seconds	3 seconds	4 seconds	2 seconds	2 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	5 seconds	8 seconds	7 seconds	1 second	1 second
Print ...
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	24 seconds	24 seconds	24 seconds	64 seconds	20 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	46 seconds	53 seconds	70 seconds	45 seconds	34 seconds
Export/Save as PDF
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	13 seconds	9 seconds	18 seconds	Not available	19 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	25 seconds	21 seconds	crashed	Not available	31 seconds
Presentation:
... with a 11 slide document
Open by dragging from Finder to closed application (warm start)
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	8 seconds	8 seconds	9 seconds	9 seconds	5 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	13 seconds	20 seconds	crashed	4 seconds	15 seconds
Time to complete slide show with No Transition set, using space bar to advance slide
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	11 seconds	14 seconds	35 seconds	11 seconds	4 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	22 seconds	29 seconds	42 seconds	9 seconds	34 seconds
Time to complete slide show with transition set to Fade Smoothly, using space bar to advance slide
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	35 seconds	39 seconds	60 seconds	23 seconds	9 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	48 seconds	59 seconds	66 seconds	18 seconds	11 seconds
Time to complete slide show with transition set to Wedge, using space bar to advance slide
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	35 seconds	38 seconds	60 seconds	20 seconds	10 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	45 seconds	54 seconds	69 seconds	17 seconds	12 seconds
Print ...
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	13 seconds	13 seconds	14 seconds	13 seconds	5 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	20 seconds	20 seconds	21 seconds	16 seconds	7 seconds
Export/Save as PDF
Machine 1 - Intel (see Notes)	9 seconds	9 seconds	12 seconds	Not available	2 seconds
Machine 2 - PPC (see Notes)	15 seconds	13 seconds	crashed	Not available	2 seconds

Notes:

• Tests were run as a newly created user with default setup
• NeoOffice versions are 2.2.5 and 3.0 Early Access
• OpenOffice.org version is 3.1 on the Intel platform
• OpenOffice.org version is 3.1 Release Candidate 2 on the PPC platform
• Microsoft Word 2004 version is 11.5.1, PowerPoint is 11.5.1
• Microsoft Word 2008 version is 12.1.7, PowerPoint is 12.1.7
• No other applications were running
• Machine 1 - Intel details: Mac OS X 10.4.11, MacBook Pro 2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1 GB RAM
• Machine 2 - PPC details: Mac OS X 10.4.11, PowerBook 1.67 GHz PPC G4, 1 GB RAM
• Automatic spell checking, grammar and hyphenation were disabled
• Sample 500,000 character word processing document was obtained from ApfelWiki Word-Alternativen Der Test and modified to open in Print Layout view
• Sample presentation document was obtained from NeoOffice Bugzilla and saved as a .odp file
• Both documents above were saved in Microsoft 97/2000/XP formats (.doc and .ppt) for MS Office testing
• Print was tested using Preview. On NeoOffice the print icon on the toolbar was used, on OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office the menu item File::Print was used due to differences in dialogs in NeoOffice and lack of a Print Preview option when using the OpenOffice.org or the Microsoft Office toolbar

Other Comparisons

Additional performance (and feature) comparisons between selected office suites and word processors are available at Mellel: Competitive Comparison (redlers.com; compares Mellel 2.0 with Microsoft Office 2004, OpenOffice.org 2.0.x, and Nisus Writer Express 2.7, but not NeoOffice) and Word-Alternativen: Der Test (apfelwiki.de; compares AbiWord 2.4.5, Mellel 2.2.7, NeoOffice 2.2.1, Nisus Writer Pro 1.0, and Apple's Pages 3.0 [de]).