Yes, indeed, Picasa is a resource hog, especially with tens of
thousands of pictures loaded and especially when it swallows up tens or hundreds
of pictures. Open Office Writer is also a resource hog but only when it loads a
huge file containing pictures, some 100 or more MB files. I managed to overcome
this problem by making the picture files smaller by exporting them from Picasa
(for me it is the easiest and most convenient way) and putting only these, small
pics into the documents. Of course, I always keep the original, high resolution
pics. Another resource hog is Gnome, which I like sometimes but I rarely use.