[mdlug] What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

[Aaron Kulkis]

Dave Arbogast wrote:
> Guys,
> 
> Those with gray hair like me, do you remember what happened back when M$ 
> released Excel version 4 for the Mac OS and they wanted EVERYONE to 
> upgrade from Excel 3 ???   Those that did not upgrade but still 
> exchanged files between 2 computers - one with Excel 3, the other with 
> Excel 4, suffered catastrophic corruption of the hard drive. This 
> appeared to the user like the HD had gone belly up.  I invested many 
> hours to recover the data from such hard drives. It is still the same 
> company and the developers from then (circa 1990) are likely development 
> managers now for the next batch of Excel developers.
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^

Dave, you misspelled "computer vandals"


> 
> -dave
> 
> Michael Corral wrote:
>> 2007-11-17, Monsieur Clinton V. Weiss a ecrit:
>>   
>>> On Nov 17, 2007 3:27 PM, Brian Hurley <brian at detroitindustrial.org> wrote:
>>>     
>>>> While software bloat is arguably bad* its definitely not restricted to MS
>>>> alone. I've read more than one benchmark showing that OO is much worse at
>>>> both speed and memory use than even the currently uber bloated MS Office.
>>>>       
>>> I have to agree with this 100%.  Last May I wrote a complex
>>> spreadsheet generated in JExcelAPI (Java) that was pure formulas -
>>>     
>>
>> o_O
>>
>>   
>>> Excel would open the spreadsheet and calculate all formulas in just
>>> shy of 10 seconds, meanwhile displaying a progress meter such that it
>>> was obvious to the user that it was "working."  OpenOffice, however,
>>> would open with a solid white screen.  After several seconds a
>>> progress meter would somewhat display near the bottom and the user
>>> could see OO crawling through the formulas.  Finally, after about 60
>>> seconds, OO would finish and the rest of the screen would catch up.
>>>     
>>
>> So let me get this right. You're complaining that OpenOffice was not
>> as robust as Excel in opening a complex *Excel* spreadsheet with tons
>> of embedded *Excel* formulas, and this for a spreadsheet that was
>> created with a library (JExcelApi) that was designed to "read, write
>> and modify Excel spreadsheets" (<http://jexcelapi.sourceforge.net/>)?
>> All I can say is: wow.
>>
>>   
>>> I'm a huge fan of open source, however, I'm also a huge fan of using
>>> the right tool for the right job.
>>>     
>>    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>> Then why didn't you use a library that creates *OpenOffice* spreadsheets
>> instead of one that creates *Excel* spreadsheets?? That would have been
>> the proper way to use OpenOffice. Your complaint would be like someone
>> complaining that Excel doesn't open QuattroPro spreadsheets as fast as
>> QuattroPro does.
>>
>>   
>>> OpenOffice, as much as they'd like
>>> to claim, is not yet the right tool for heavy spreadsheet usage.
>>>     
>>
>> Sure it is. And many people use it for that every day. You just weren't
>> using it properly. That's your fault, not OpenOffice's.
>>
>>   
>>> OpenOffice is *NOT* Excel.
>>>     
>>
>> Exactly. :) And that's a good thing. I sure wouldn't want OpenOffice
>> to calculate 65535 as 100000, as Excel 2007 does:
>> <http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/09/24/2339203.shtml>
>> Better hope your Excel formulas don't calculate that. :p
>>
>> Michael