Hi Phillip,
I did some search on OpenOffice... It runs on as little as 32MB of memory (however the more the better)... Heavy window managers may require at least 64MB of RAM... So, I may be wrong about the memory after all...
Also, they suggest that problems with menu redraw (and some icons as well) are somehow related to graphics driver card. You may also try using a simpler window manager (eg Blackbox) just to see what happens and whether those menus actually redraw correctly under different set of conditions.
According to OpenOffice team, these are the steps:
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First, press the following combination of keys inside your OOo
application:'CTRL+Shift+R'. The screen will be redrawn and the less
critical problems should be resolved.
If the previous step doesn't work for you, try changing the options
for your graphical resolution or colour depth.
Finally, you can turn 'Use OpenGL' off under
Tools–Options–General–Other. Cards with known problems: ATI,
Matrox,
S3 Virge... Explanation: assume you have in a graphic standard
spectrum of 150 features. Most of the cards support the top 10.
Unfortunately, OpenOffice.org sometimes needs the support of the 142nd
one...
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I installed OpenOffice on my home network on two computers and no problems at all...
A drastic measure would be to reinstall, probably not needed at this point...
KWord is a nice program... However at this point in time OpenOffice has plenty of features to eliminate Word from your desktop :-)
Plenty of choice out there... Although using LaTeX in a school environment would be a bit heavy to start of with... If you work at a Linux-friendly school something simple like KOffice could be a way to go I guess... :-)
Take care,
Davor
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