New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline • Hacker News Board

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#11

Post by localhost » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

jonthn wrote: post #3

Why would anyone use Excel now?

Because Excel is the backbone of how most organizations do "computation". For example, if you look at any financial services company, you will find not only Excel everywhere, but tons of VBA code in those spreadsheets which also turn around and talk to various compute clusters that they use (both Windows HPC server and LOTS of Linux). Excel isn't going away anytime soon.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#12

Post by bigchewy » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

jonthn wrote: post #3

Why would anyone use Excel now?

power users. it's faster and has shortcuts that everyone has memorized.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#13

Post by uptown » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:43 PM UTC

jonthn wrote: post #3

Why would anyone use Excel now?

privacy

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#14

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

Good to see filtering is finally a client-only action. It always struck me as strange that what was effectively a view change (on the order of scrolling through the document or changing the active page) propagated to other collaborators.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#15

Post by bjg » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

jonthn wrote: post #3

Why would anyone use Excel now?

Well, there's power pivot[0].

[0] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/powerpivot.aspx

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#16

Post by antr » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:47 PM UTC

jonthn wrote: post #3

Why would anyone use Excel now?

having worked at a multinational for some years where excel was the bread and butter: privacy, power features (e.g. tables, goal seek, etc), and custom-built (corporate) plugins are the three biggest reasons I can think off.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#17

Post by goler » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:48 PM UTC

and Paste Transpose!

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#18

Post by oinksoft » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

discardorama wrote: post #9

"works offline" ... in Chrome only!

Not so different from features that only worked with Google Gears before, Chrome essentially being Gears, matured.

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#19

Post by joezydeco » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:50 PM UTC

jonthn wrote: post #3

Why would anyone use Excel now?

I've worked with one organization that uses Excel sheets to model product mathematics for gaming (gambling) equipment. They won't even use the Macintosh version of Excel since they can't be sure the math will come out exactly the same as the PC version, and the PC version is what has gotten them approved by the gaming boards before.

Call it superstitious, but they don't have the time or expense to sit there and prove that another spreadsheet works 100.00% identally to PC Excel. So now they run Excel in VMWare on OSX. There's irony there, but what can you do?

Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline

#20

Post by FigBug » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

justinsb wrote: post #5

Offline is awesome; obviously because it means it works anywhere, but also I presume this means that all formula evaluation is now done locally, i.e. "instantly". I am pretty sure that before the server was involved in (some?) recalculation, which caused sluggishness.

I still find it bizarre that the actual files still aren't synced in the google drive desktop app. Instead they are synced and stored in the browser. I'm assuming this means you have to go into the browser and get the latest versions before you go offline, rather than the desktop app keeping you in sync. The desktop app really feels neglected, like it's a checkbox feature to compete with Dropbox.