I agree, Pages is very nice for page setups like a newsletter or flyer, but I don't think it is all that great for everyday word processing, which is what most people do. It is lacking in that area, though i don't doubt that one day they will upgrade it to cover it's short commings. And when you compair the looks of Open Office to something like Pages, i would say pages comes up short looking like they forgot something.
I see your example of Open Office the old v.1.1, have you seen the latest version, version 2, it looks quite a bit different. They cleaned up some of the clutter of the early 1.1 and now have the database on the menus where they should have been long ago. A much improved program and they are working all the time improving it.
I too would rather use a native OS X version, rather than using X11, but they just aren't improving NeoOffice with any speed. And, i see no speed loss using X11 on my system, maybe some stressed out older systems might, but not on mine. Or maybe if i could type faster than 60 wpm i would see some lag.
But what ever, different strokes for different folks. The formost advantage of OpenOffice is very good compatability, easy to use and free. I will take that most times over those over priced buggy commerical programs that are always being pushed.