I do have an overclock kernel. I run Titan's kernel at 850 mHz. And yes, OOo is a little slow to start up. But, we are talking of a difference of 20 seconds between what would seem very fast and what appears slow. To me, those 20 seconds are livable when i need the power of a full blown word processor that can handle ODF and DOC files, tables and other heavy formatting, and that can create PDFs from them. If you don't need all that, then sure, the 20 seconds may not be worth it.

I ham not familiar with how well Abiword handles all that.