You can't go saying it's Windows fault, it's not, it's Blitz's or the original coder's fault (depending on your point of view).
Except it really is Windows' fault. Advanced Text Services (ie. speech and handwritting reckognition) will break nearly every single program that doesn't have "supports TabletPC" written on the sleeve, including but not limited to everything written in Blitz3D, even things that do not use any text services. Disable "Advanced Text Services" and/or try it on a non-TabletPC Edition of WindowsXP and everything works just dandy. Now you could blame Adobe and BRL for making bad applications, or you could blame Microsoft for making same-generation OSes incompatible and inconsistent across "flavors".Another somewhat ironic example is Windows Server 2003 and it's failure to run anything DX based, including but not limited to anything written in non-OpenGL Blitz products.
I use OpenOffice exclusively on my home computer, and haven't missed MS Office for half a second.
So do I, and I haven't noticed any slow load times or large memory footprints. Particularly not compared to MS Office, and as extra icing on the cake, OpenOffice templates and documents (unlike MS Office) are actually interchangable between English and Danish versions of the same bloody program.