or the lack of it is very true. Microsoft Word is abysmal word processor.
The upside is that LyX is available, for the cost of X11 installation
The part about slow processor is also true; for most business applications (i.e. integer processing and byte string addressing) x86 and PPC are pretty much MHz per MHz equivalent. Depending on the locality of reference of the executing code, the bigger L2 cache of the older G4 machines puts them more in the Xeon league; new G4's are actually weaker in that respect, even if their L2 cache is faster