internetnews.com — "The innovations we're delivering in Excel in terms of new usability, new visual user interface advancements, support for collaboration and business intelligence with things like Excel Services are so far beyond [Google Spreadsheets] that it's like watching a time machine from 10 years ago."
Jun 6, 2006 View in Crawl 4
ilitiritJun 7, 2006
@Everyone talking about Lotus, Corel etc.Rest assured that I am very familiar with these products (meaning I've actually used them). somerandomnerd, you guess wrong. I used Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro Pro when they were still DOS applications. In fact, until about 2 years ago I still supported a client who was running Lotus Smartsuite. (He eventually converted to Excel after trying it out).Now IMO these products just don't hold a candle to Excel. I'm saying this as a software developer (I can script an Excel document using the commandline and a text editor) and a user (I can read spreadsheets in my browser without any addons). And those are just two small examples. Furthermore those are only TWO spreadsheet applications (I told you guys you wouldn't find many products), and how much "innovation" has there been on their side in the last 10 years? IMO they've just been playing catch up.As for OO.org, do you (lnxaddct) honestly believe that MS has been copying them? Sure, OO is based on StarOffice, and that was developed in 1986 (although there's no way you can claim the code base is the same as 17 years ago without firsthand knowledge...), but surprise surprise, Excel was developed in 1985. Excel has been the market leader since 1995.
Closed AccountJun 7, 2006
Microsoft said the exact same thing about open office; it's funny coming from a company that can't release anything with out it being 10 years late.
chiron74Jun 8, 2006
Let's all fall for the "new look" in 2007, if you change they way it looks and get a graphic artist to make a ribbon bar then people will flock to bay $$$ for the upgrades. For most people out there, Open Office has all the features you need and Google Spreadsheets although quite rudimentary by comparison will only go from strength to strength. If the things Google does are so 10 years ago then why is Microsoft scrabbling like mad to copy their products in the Windows Live Fold? Perhaps Bill has never lived down the embarrassment of saying publicly that the Internet will never take off and is just hedging his bets
johnnysoftwareJun 9, 2006
The feature set as of this morning might be good enough for some purposes and preclude using it for other ones.However, that can change REALLY fast.Typical spreadsheet applications get upgraded every couple of YEARS.As Google has repeatedly demonstrated over the past 2 years, they can upgrade their web browser based applications in every couple of months. And the updated version is available and being used by everyone the minute Google does.So yeah, it is less for less, but it can become more - more quickly - than traditionally desktop spreadsheet applications have conditioned us to expect.It is not so much a blow to the skull of Microsoft as a small blade wavering between their knees. It might never hurt them.If it does, it will probably be a sudden surprise.
gsmitheidwJun 28, 2006
@willcode4beerOf course you can have an OS that boots directly from the network - haven't you heard of PXE boot ?In theory you need nothing more than a simple BIOS locally...