Study Recommends Gnumeric Over MS Excel 86
Jody Goldberg writes "A recent study of analytic quality, and responsiveness to problems strongly preferred Gnumeric in place of MS Excel. With new problems popping up in Office XP the case for spreadsheet users to migrate is only getting stronger.
In some related Gnumeric quickies, a new stable version 1.2.6 was released, and Open has done an interview with the Maintainer."
Gnumeric 0wns (Score:4, Interesting)
In a recent interview [open-mag.com], Jody said a W32 port was the priority. I think that could actually start pushing it over the top and make some real headway, I can see why it would be a priority.
Re:Gnumeric 0wns (Score:2)
Re:Gnumeric 0wns (Score:2)
Re:Gnumeric 0wns (Score:4, Informative)
If you take a look at linked page, you'd see:
Gnumeric is great! (Score:2, Insightful)
Gnumeric's RND was *too* random (Score:5, Interesting)
True, there are times it is nice to have a "random" number generator that you can re-run for testing, but having a really random number generator is better for a host of problems.
Err... (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, when doing a study, frequently you *do* want to be able to use the same seed to produce exactly the same results. This is a legitimate failing in gnumeric. Not all random numbers are created equal.
For what it's worth, I did (simple) analysis of a large set of random number generators for a high school science fair project. The Microsoft RNG (which has been used ever since at least early QBASIC days) is pretty decent, at least from a uniformity standpoint.
Re:Err... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Err... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, this kind of complaint seems fairly weak to me, since you have a whole spreadsheet at your fingertips. You could just capture a whole lot of the numbers onto one sheet and use those over and over as input instead.
Re:Err... (Score:2, Interesting)
Say you want to do up a spreadsheet containing some tables that contain data based on random data. You *could* either include fifteen megs or whatever of random numbers, or you could just include a random number function with a seed if your spreadsheet uses a standard RNG. As long as the variability with different seeds isn't significant for your work, you shouldn't have a problem. However, you *may*
Re:Err... (Score:1)
Re:Err... (Score:2)
Thanks to the replies, though, I can understand why having a known set of "random" numbers could be useful.. It's just nothing I would have ever used, so never even thought of. Maybe I was just more thrown off by the word "study"...
Now you know where good statistics comes from (Score:1)
Re:Err... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Err... (Score:2)
Cryptographic random numbers set the bar somewhat higher, in that they need to unpredictable too. It would be fatal for many applications if an attacker could guess the next few pseudorandom number given a little history.
E.g. a LCG is very predictable, but may be statistically random-looking enough for many applications.
To use *reall
Jumping the Gun? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is similar to having your car found defective, and then placing a flyer downtown to ask the company to contact you about options instead of picking up the phone and dialing the correct number.
I'm not a fan of Microsoftian ideals, but wouldn't that have made more sense before going all this way?
Re:Jumping the Gun? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think not.
In defence of MS people (Score:4, Interesting)
I've e-mailed a well-informed and helpful Microsoft developer, whom I first encountered on this very forum, on several occasions. I'm told a number of bug reports have been filed against the application in question as a result of my e-mails, and some of the things I've mentioned to him have certainly been fixed in a later version of the product.
Some people at Microsoft do listen, you just have to make a bit of an effort to find them. Curiously, a comment from the developer in question was that the dev teams love direct contact with customers prepared to give them helpful information about bugs or feature requests, they just wish the PR people would stop getting in the way. :-)
Re:In defence of MS people (Score:1)
Re:In defence of MS people (Score:5, Interesting)
...a perfect example between the difference in OSS and closed source.
I've worked both sides of the fence, and realize the differences. There are base motivations that drive each to do things differently. Still, I was stunned when I asked Theodore Tso a question in email a few years back, and he not only responded quickly but even sent a patch for me to try out!
Fixed in later versions. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fixed in later versions. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily. You don't pay for MS service packs, you have to pay little or nothing for new versions of several MS products, and those who've bought a support contract from Microsoft get a lot of the serious stuff for no further charges, too. I don't agree with a lot of MS practices, but your comment is simply wrong.
Re:Jumping the Gun? (Score:1)
I use excel all day (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea that one should switch from excel to an open source solution because of a small set of statistics problems cannot be properly solved by excel seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water. (unless you do nothing but statistical modelling all day)
Re:I use excel all day (Score:2, Interesting)
None of the open source alternatives can do what I need - VBA. That alone shoots down anything non MS (afaik).
Re:I use excel all day (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I use excel all day (Score:4, Insightful)
If you do heavy VBA, though, switching to a better tool is a wise choice.
Re:I use excel all day (Score:4, Interesting)
True - VBA shouldn't be used for extremely complex items, but for my use, and other power uses - it's tremendous in it's automation abilities.
Re:I use excel all day (Score:2)
You and I need to talk. I posted an Ask Slashdot about what steps people in our position have tried and what successes they've had in getting policies relaxed for legitimate "power-user" needs.
It was Rejected of course. But anyway, I was going to post the same comment - I have to use VBA because I have no other options. Although I do all my VBA in Access (forms are way better with VBA and a control table to handle DAO lookups!).
I'v
Re:I use excel all day (Score:1)
As far as the post saying anything that uses VBA should instead being using a dbms and real language, I can only laugh. The subject matter experts need the freedom to work and do their job, which is to be experts.
Now if one of those spreadsheets grows to the poi
Ah, bollocks (Score:1, Interesting)
Do you know what Excel is for? It's for secretaries to knock up pie graphs for the boss to bore the rest of the staff to tears with, and keep track of the office 'dead poool' comp.
The whiners fall into a few categories.
'Wah, won't hold enough data' - Store the data somewhere else then. Go use SPSS or Access, Oracle etc. Excel will handle OPAL cubes.
'Wah, Excel is M$' - Fuck off and use Gnumeric then.
'Wah, Excel doesn't have some bloody o
Re:I use excel all day (Score:5, Interesting)
However, you're suggesting we use a bulldozer when a shovel will work just fine.
I work for a Pharmaceutical company as a software developer. Our scientists use Excel spreadsheets as reports; they enter in some raw data (or it's streamed in from an external program) and a combination of VBA and Excel formulas do the rest. These spreadhseets summarize data, predict flows, highlite trouble data, etc.
THEN, in some cases (at least those that are needed), we have the ability to export the data stored in the Excel spreadsheets into Oracle tables.
The spreadsheet acts as an intermediary for the scientists. It gives them something visual. They can modify things themselves, look at graphs for select data, etc. In some cases, they've even written their own VBA code to perform certain tasks. It's a horrible language, but simple enough for someone to pick up.
Try writing software to allow them to do all of this, and to work with about 150 different macros that were written in the past. A biologist is not going to try to learn C++ or Java, because it's too time consuming and overkill for what they need. And any application, as simple as you make it, will not be as customizable and visual as Excel. You'd be robbing them of that important aspect.
Sure, VBA is a pain in the ass; I wish it would go away forever. But it's made its niche; it allows the non-computer-savvy to do complex things. Anything better would be overkill and would reduce functionality.
Re:I use excel all day (Score:1)
Re:I use excel all day (Score:1)
"If you are using VBA in your spread sheet you need to move to a better solution - a dbms and a decent programming language."
I'm not in an IT department. I just make my life (and my co-workers lives) easier with some code here and there.
"You are doing the equivilant of using a table knife for a screwdriver."
I'll use the same metaphor. In a lot of cases I'm using 30 lines of code to copy files, m
Re:I use excel all day (Score:3, Informative)
Gnumeric is scriptable with Python.
Re:I use excel all day (Score:3, Informative)
Other than VBA stuff i don't think there is anything excel does that gnumeric can't.
Re:I use excel all day (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, it's great for 90% of what people want to do, and it gets the answers right.
Re:I use excel all day (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:3.1 StRd (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:3.1 StRd (Score:2)
>[...] a larger LRE means a smaller relative error
Precisely.
>It looks like Gnumeric improved or stayed the same on every data point
So far so good...
> except Pidigits, Numacc2, and Origin1[...]
... where the new version scored worse according to the table; lower numbers meaning fewer correct digits.
Even so the description reads:
"As can be seen, Gnumeric 0.67 used an unstable algorithm for computing the sample standard deviation, and on this basis its performance can be considered una
leiomyosarcoma (Score:2, Offtopic)
A less than flattering release name.
Thought it might have meant "cancer of my flower necklace" or something.
What of the programmability? The killer feature of MS Office isn't the applications themselves, but VBA.
Re:leiomyosarcoma (Score:2)
Conspiracy!! (Score:5, Funny)
Not really the battle (Score:5, Insightful)
If TODAY everything was equal, there would still be a 10 year lag until a change happened, as that is the roll out time, and the time to convince people they 'want' to change. It better have some kick butt feature that they don't have in Excel, or they are going to resist change. That is just the way people are
Re:Not really the battle (Score:5, Interesting)
If I weren't posting on this thread, I'd mod that up as Insightful.
Advocates of new software, particularly OSS, often seem to forget that market share counts for a huge amount. Some studies we looked at back when I was in academia suggested that you need the "10x factor" to force a switch from an established product: your alternative must provide 10x the perceived benefits, or be 1/10 the price. That's a very big barrier to entry, and having a product that's only just become a challenger on technical merit and reliability is nowhere near it. (It's a good start, though!)
Inertia a two-edged sword (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, keep in mind that even upgrading from one version of Excel to another can break compatibility. The office world has very strong backwards-compatibility requirements. Gnumeric may not fill those requirements, but we also know that Excel doesn't do so.
Re:Not really the battle (Score:2)
Since it would be difficult to build a spreadsheet that has 10x the features of Excel and still call it a spreadsheet, obviously Gnome should start charging $10 a copy for Gnumeric if they want to increase their marketshare.
Quite frankly, I'm more inclined to say that Gnumeric doesn't have the feature matching needed to get most users to switch. The chart
Re:Not really the battle (Score:2)
Sorry, I think you misunderstand. The 10x doesn't have to be feature count; in fact, typically it's not. It could also be, for example, due to usability improvements that make staff using a product at your company more productive, or better support for automating existing features, p
Re:Not really the battle (Score:2, Interesting)
Doing correct computations seems to me to be a huge benefit.
If I had to use MS-Excel to manipulate serious figures, for instance huge budgets, I wonder how well I would sleep. And if I had people under my responsability who manipulate serious numbers, I would ask them to prefere accuracy to spectacular pie-charts. Am I that weird ?
By the way, if your business goes into troubles because of MS-Excel bugs which have been well known for years, can you sue MS ? Of course, the EULA tells you you can't, b
Re:Not really the battle (Score:2)
Hopefully if you were manipulating serious figures, you'd be using serious tools and serious techniques, starting with redundant cross-checking of any calculations. It doesn't matter whether it's Excel's RAND() function, Pentium's inability to divide or Pentium IV's inability to calculate sines properly, you're always at risk of a numerical error when using computers, and much more so if yo
Re:Not really the battle (Score:1)
For many people, MS stuff is serious.
If the bug's been known for years and you still let your business depend on its non-existence, it's your own fault if you kill the business. Risk management is a key skill in running any commercial organisation, and you failed at step one: doing your homework.
And if the bug has been known by people wh
Re:Not really the battle (Score:2)
One can always make it easy for employees:
The hace have Gnumeric/OpenOfice or they can have Excell.
If they choose Excell - they an two exrea features:
1) Clippy.
2) Their pay docked by the purchase price for Excell.
Re:Not really the battle (Score:2)
Get garnome! (Score:3, Informative)
Garnome 0.30.1 was just released and it features the latest version of Gnome (2.5.5), The new, non ugly file dialog (but not all programs use it yet) and of course, Gnome Applications, including Gnumeric 1.2.6.
It is designed for IA-32 Gnu/Linux, but it should work on most OS's. Download it now [gnome.org].
And if you liked the power of garnome, you may be interested in the power of Gentoo Linux [gentoo.org], which is like garnome for your entire distribution!
Finally, some sense! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen spreadsheets where MS-Excel would miscalculate results by 20%. MS-Excel also has enormous problems handling circular spreadsheets. Both are probably related to defects in the order-of-calculation algorithm.
Re:Finally, some sense! (Score:4, Interesting)
Despite the fact that this has an easy fix (mean center the data before computing the deviation), Excel has had this problem for years.
Maintainer? (Score:5, Funny)
Stupid Rant (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't read all of the linked article -- so whatever...however, I will say this: Anything that makes Microsoft Office look bad and (insert cheaper solution here) look better, I like.
For a $1000 computer, I pay ~$400 per license for MS Office Professional -- that's 40% of the cost of the computer. If I could convince management and our user base, I'd change to anything else because anything else would be cheaper (Star Office, Lotus Smart Suite, OpenOffice, whatever). I checked out Open Office with one of our accounting guys, and it worked just fine with all of his macros. Peace of mind against FUD just isn't worth that much. MS Office is a fine product, just not worth the price. If there was anything with a remotely competitive amount of market share, I'm sure that MS would drop their prices to stay competitive.
Re:Stupid Rant (Score:2, Informative)
Granted, you can't use it for commercial purposes, but it's fine for home users that just need to read / write Word and Excel files. The Academic version in retail outlets no longer requires you to provide proof-of-acadmic-status. You just pick it off the shelf, and pay for it at the register.
However, I can't justify a constant upgrade
Re:Stupid Rant (Score:2)
I appreciate the advice, but since we're in a corporate setting, I can't do that. Furthermore, I consider managing software licensing part of my job...ya' never know when a disgruntled employee (or former employee) will call the BSA and start an audit.
I probably wouldn't have the same problem if the license costs were only a one-tim
great point! (Score:2)
1. When you say "retail" you really mean "megacorp". I don't bring it up to be mean, but again, they're only about selling the things that make them the MOST money...not about providing a wide variety of options unless they profit from it. MS is a great bed-buddy for them because they speak "profit-speak" I've been noticing at by local BB how more shelf space is being give to a fewer number of vendors....with fewer products on display!
2. MS will do
Solver:? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Solver:? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Solver:? (Score:3, Insightful)
As of gnumeric 1.2.1 the solver i gnumeric is not nearly as capable as the one in Excel. I am not bashing gnumeric. It has come a long way, and is probably great for 90% of what 99% of people do with their spreadsheets. But the only thing I really do with spreadsheets is use Solver, and I can't do it with gnumeric the way I can with Excel...
If I had the time and energy, I would help you guys write a solver work-a-like, but grad school, work, family, you know...
Keep it up though...