At 6:51am -0500 Wed, 24 Nov 2010, Andrew wrote:
One other discussion I want to start is that do we actually need/want the quickstarter? From my own experience it is annoying and not needed - why should an office suite be in the system tray, it is not needed.
I have only my memory as a young person/non-developer, so take what I say with a grain of salt: Originally, I believe the idea was to compete with how much faster MSOffice started. OpenOffice was *always* slow in comparison to MSOffice (on Windows), and the QuickStart solution was meant to hide the loading time of the major parts of OpenOffice in the computer startup. (The idea was that a standard workflow was to turn on the computer and walk away for five minutes, because Windows took so long to boot anyway; besides MSOffice "cheated" by using Windows internals -- or so went a common rumor.)
Maybe the best way to go about this discussion is to ask - "Is there anyone that wants to keep the Quickstarter?"
This is a question I wanted to ask in a previous thread as well but it wasn't pertinent then; I'm glad you brought it up. Frankly, I think the QuickStart solution was always the wrong answer. It represents to me a quick and (truly) dirty solution. I believe the "correct" answer is to streamline LO. However, the latter solution involves a bit more diligence (i.e. more work :-( ).
So, ideally, I believe the QuickStart solution would be removed. I don't like it, and personally, I turn it off whenever it is on by default: I use my resources, and I don't want them forcibly (pre)wasted.
Kevin