Re: The enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

On 10/28/24 1:08 PM, CrudeSausage wrote:

On 2024-10-28 12:48 p.m., DFS wrote:

On 10/28/2024 11:19 AM, CrudeSausage wrote:

On 2024-10-28 10:24 a.m., DFS wrote:

"‘I grew up with it’: readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel
>
 From baby names to wedding planning, fans of the 40-year-old spreadsheet program reveal how it has transformed their lives"
>
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/28/microsoft-excel- spreadsheet-program-40-years
>
>
MS is doomed.

>
Others will grow up with Calc...

>
>
I pity the fools...

 People only think Excel is better if they're aware of its existence. My students' lack of awareness seems to represent the greater society: they don't know what they're using, they just know that it does spreadsheets. If manufacturers were to bundle LibreOffice rather than Microsoft Office, only a few would even notice that it's not the same thing.

That statement presumes that all product alternatives work well, and not too particularly buggy.  In reading your comment I was reminded of a quite bad experience I had with Open Office (OO) a decade ago.
Here's the GG archive link:
<https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.advocacy/c/XKYAl0HHMkQ/m/6C7lLDde8mEJ>
What I said back in November 2012:
[quote]
 > >>> I have a contractor who is using OO.  With a multi-million dollar
 > >>> contract for but a dozen employees, one would think that they would
 > >>> spring for at least one $500 license for the secretary to do their
 > >>> presentations&  reports, but the simple fact is that they didn't.
 >
 > >>> Their reports are utter disasters: data charts' scales changing
 > >>> between what's on the screen vs. what's on the overhead projector, a
 > >>> third (and horrific) print format, etc.  I'll see if I can adequately
 > >>> recuse a few pages to provide an example to post.
 >
 > >>> Their poor performance in their reporting in particular means that
 > >>> they're not going to get their contract renewed.  Congratulations Open
 > >>> Office!
 >
 > >> Pretty much proves the case :  If you want a professional looking job
 > >> you have to use professional tools.
 >
 > > It utterly proves the case for as far as I'm concerned.  I've been
 > > relatively indifferent in regards to the Office-vs-OO question until I
 > > saw the nightmare that I'm having to deal with from this vendor.
 >
 > > And having two PhD's hasn't helped them.
 >
 > Which OO app are they using for reports?
No idea, as I haven't tried to look. It only became evident when I
noticed on their main project presentation that the scales on the
chart were off ... showing NEGATIVE gain on an amplifier was the
obvious clue.
Aborted the presentation and that's where I noticed that it wasn't an M
$ product ... they pulled up the spreadsheet and we confirmed that the
data had actually been correctly entered; created a new graph of the
data and found that the error was repeatable.
Perhaps the reason why they're overdue with getting the corrections
done is because they're continuing to bang their head against the wall
to try to make OO work, instead of just simply buying a damn copy of
MS-Office. Hell, it is a tax-deductible business expense too.
-hh
[/quote]
TL;DR ... their contract was later terminated on performance.
After doing a bit of sleuthing, it seems they're probably still mostly in business.  Not too much info, but they do appear to be offering a product that's mostly what we were paying for them to develop, although its power output is vastly lower.  I also noticed mention of another product that I can recall being shown 12 years ago, which suggests a pretty slow R&D product development turnover rate.
-hh