It has been noted that OpenOffice 2.0 is slow to start. One of the tricks that is used to keep users from being too annoyed whilst they wait it to start is to show a progress bar, which gives a visual indication of how long the user will have to wait. In fact, users prefer a longer wait with a progress bar than a slightly shorter wait without the progress bar.
In OpenOffice's case, on my computer at least, the progress bar is decidedly useless. When I start any of the OpenOffice programs, the progress bar pops up and reaches 100% in under half a second. It then stays in that state for another 8 seconds until the program has fully loaded. Whilst I believe that 8 seconds is a long time to wait for a simple program to load on a fast computer, an improvement in the relation between the progress bar and what is actually happening will go a long way to improving the end-user experience.