I already love OpenOffice for all the typical reasons (functionality, freedom, etc.), but it's always been a little slow to load. It might take 15 seconds or so to initially open writer or calc...once they're open, everything is fine...it's just that load time that's a little annoying.
Here's a link to an article that shortens that load time by allocating more memory to OOo. I *did not* try the JRE trick listed there...just the first part about changing memory usage in Tools>Options>OpenOffice.org.
With that done, OOo load time is down to 3-4 seconds!