Put a raptor 10k rpm drive in your system and install office to there. That should improve load times. RAM will not have an effect on load time until after the software has been put into memory, so the first load is largely controlled by the hard drive. Plus, he has 1gb which is sufficient to handle windows + crap + office. A faster CPU will help, but the biggest change would be a new hard drive.
Edit: By system specs, is that a laptop? If so, do you have a 7200rpm notebook drive yet? Those are a very nice upgrade over the 5200rpm drives, but they do suck battery if you use it unplugged a lot.