After you unzip the downloaded setup files to your hard disk (we accidentally tried skipping the unzip, just double-clicking the Setup icon from within a Windows XP display-archive-contents window, and it didn't work), setup is straightforward. A helpful dialog box offers to make OpenOffice.org the default application for opening files with Office's DOC, XLS, and PPT extensions — probably not the best idea, at least early in the transition. A less helpful dialog warns of dire consequences if you don't have an up-to-date Java runtime environment installed; in truth, OOo needs Java only for certain file filters and JDBC database access.
While the core module is still named soffice.exe, OpenOffice.org 1.0 marked the suite's transition to relatively lean, separate modules versus the bulky, unwieldy all-in-one design (at one point including a web browser and even a Windows-alternative PC desktop) seen in earlier versions of StarOffice. Release 1.1 still isn't the fastest software on the planet, but it does offer noticeably perkier performance than last year's edition, thanks partly to a Microsoft Office-style "Quickstarter" loaded into the Windows system tray at startup (you can switch this off if you prefer). The applications took no more than 10 or 15 seconds to load even on the not-super-swift Pentium III/550 and Pentium M/900 systems we used for testing, and menus and program functions moved right along.
With its formerly sluggish performance improved, it's easier to appreciate OOo's integrated convenience — unlike Microsoft Office, you can access one suite application from within another (opening a presentation, say, from within the word processor, instead of having Word try and fail to open a PowerPoint file as a Word document). One small but immense improvement from version 1.0 is that you can now close your last or only open window without closing OpenOffice.org altogether, so you're free to load or start another document.
