NeoOffice, the full-featured suite of office applications designed specifically for Mac OS X users, has received a new update. Version 2.2.5 makes slideshow presentations run up to two times faster than in OpenOffice 3.0, adds custom folders in Media Browser and remote control support for slideshow presentations.

While slideshow speed has been reasonable on new machines with lots of memory, slideshow speed was very slow for older machines or those with limited memory, the development team reveals. After much analysis and testing, the team discovered that NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code does a lot of unnecessary work while running slideshows. Starting with NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch 4, NeoOffice was able to detect and skip such unnecessary work. With these changes, significant speed improvements were spotted when running slideshow presentations, and even when opening presentation files. With these performance improvements, NeoOffice slideshow presentations now run significantly faster than OpenOffice.org 3.0 Release Candidate 1, according to the folks at NeoOffice.org.

Starting with NeoOffice 2.2.5, the development team has also fixed the bug in NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code. Now the cursor does scroll off of the screen when saving a document while in Writer's web layout view.

With the addition of Karelia Software's iMedia Browser in NeoOffice 2.2.4, you have the ability to customize the folders that were displayed in the Media Browser.

Starting with NeoOffice 2.2.5, you can add any folder to the Media Browser by dragging a folder from the Finder or your Desktop into the Media Browser window or by Control-clicking in the Media Browser's list of folders, according to the changelog.

Lastly, by installing NeoOffice 2.5.5, slideshow presentations can be run using a remote control. When an Impress window is the active window in NeoOffice, pressing the Start/Pause (▶||) button on your Front Row remote controller will start a slideshow. When a slideshow is already running, the following actions are available:

Pressing the Track Forward (▶▶|) button will move forward a slide.
Pressing the Track Backward (|◀◀) button will move back a slide.
Pressing the Start/Pause (▶||) button will end the slideshow.

NeoOffice 2.2.5 is available as a free download here. The update is 139.5 MB in size, and requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later.