Excel 2008 WTF?
OK, I have read some complaints about what happens with some big excel benchmark or something but try this one on for size:
Making a chart with 6 data points took 1 full minute to make and scrolling down after the thing was rendered, damn near impossible! seriously, Office 97 on a 486 beat this! with the right IO,, a FREE CELL PHNE could beat this! I have a brand new Macbook, smoking fast...Can we sue MS for a defective product?
Making a chart with 6 data points took 1 full minute to make and scrolling down after the thing was rendered, damn near impossible! seriously, Office 97 on a 486 beat this! with the right IO,, a FREE CELL PHNE could beat this! I have a brand new Macbook, smoking fast...Can we sue MS for a defective product?
Comments
OK, I have read some complaints about what happens with some big excel benchmark or something but try this one on for size:
Making a chart with 6 data points took 1 full minute to make and scrolling down after the thing was rendered, damn near impossible! seriously, Office 97 on a 486 beat this! with the right IO,, a FREE CELL PHNE could beat this! I have a brand new Macbook, smoking fast...Can we sue MS for a defective product?
No you can't sue when it's PEBCAK. Because you made the conscious decision of buying a Microsoft product, you must live with the consequences.
Making a chart with 6 data points took 1 full minute to make and scrolling down after the thing was rendered, damn near impossible! seriously, Office 97 on a 486 beat this!
Of course. Apparently, others too are having performance issues with Excel 2008. I am afraid that for the time being you are stuck with that. MS should provide some update but who knows when.
It has really nothing except supposed Intel native code (which I guess is the usual MS nonstandard Mac coding hacks).
Excel 2004 still runs really well on my Mac Pro under Rosetta.
If Apple's Numbers didn't suck so bad, I would switch to it.
I still say Excel 4.0 and Word 5.1a were the best ever. There is nothing in the new versions that these could not do, and they flew even on a 16 mHz 68020.
There is nothing in the new versions that these could not do, and they flew even on a 16 mHz 68020.
I would like to see a youtube video made with an ancient version of Office running on one of those kind of machines vs a brand new Mac running Office 2008 comparing launch times, data input etc and just see how much difference there is.
Intel Mac users gain some benefit in areas but nothing too noteworthy. We either get to deal with the annoying bugs in 2004 or the totally new annoying bugs in 2008. I think Microsoft will probably push it to the point that it is better than 2004 for most people, but in time they'll probably start ignoring it again and major issues will go unaddressed.
I can't wait for Numbers to get fleshed out.
Apple did the same thing with Numbers - fluffy shades, colors, art, templates, etc - and not enough functions. Not Applescriptable either.
Flyers, pamphlets, menus, etc, etc, - blah.
Apple did the same thing with Pages - we needed a word processor and they give us a page-layout application. "New Page?" WTF? I used word processors in 1971 that at least did pagination.
Word 5.1a had styles, ability to set the next style for each particular paragraph style, it had endnotes, it had columns, sections, mail merge, etc.
Excel 4 had all the functions it has today (which still does not include simple things like year to date, end of last year, last filled cell in a column, etc), but it had arrays, named variables, one-way and two-way tables, customizable menu items, iterations, etc.
Word and Excel 6 were the worst disasters ever foisted on the Mac. MS tossed their Mac code and made a back-port of the Windows version with garish toolbars all over the place and snail-paced speed.
Apple did the same thing with Pages - we needed a word processor and they give us a page-layout application. "New Page?" WTF? I used word processors in 1971 that at least did pagination.
It does pagination. New Page should really be called New Section. If you ignore that command entirely, it works like any other word processor.
2008 is still less useless than Numbers (for what I do), but they both are OK for very basic stuff. I do think 2004 runs better for some reason, even on Intels.