Writer 1.9.91 takes 9 seconds to open on this Athlon64 with 1 GB of RAM. I have no idea how the Formula editor can be so slow either.
On the other hand, DeScribe 5 (Win32) loads in < 1 s. Word 97 (which, granted, has a bunch of DLLs already loaded) loads in < 1 s.
OO is a turtle. Saying desktop Java is comparable isn't saying much. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.