Yes, my boss was indeed a data animal. He was at director level (managed managers) but when he was scheduled to lead an executive committee meeting, you could hear the groans as people were overwhelmed with data and charts and rudimentary PPT slides. He could use data to make you believe that black was white. Not statistics, but raw data being pushed around by data bulldozers.

People used to say, “Pay no attention to that little man behind the spreadsheet.” (He was 5’6 and skinny as a rail, pure Italian when talking with his hands…) But it was a real pleasure to work for him as he could use his data to show how much more productive we project managers and engineers would be if we flew to Europe in business class, or how better customer relations would be if our wives were there to schmooze the customers’ wives. He had a true following but you had to give him 110% or else you were out. Sort of like Jobs. Hey, wait…

Thankfully, someone on this site understands *contextual* grammar.

If I had pie, I would gladly share a piece with you.

(btw, do you have any pie?)

Too bad for whom? Microsoft have consistently refused to mature into a useful contributor to the computer community. Instead they have remained a bumbling parasite. If I saw an iota of hope for their reformation, I’d be loathe to ring their death knell. But I don’t. Therefore, good riddance to the single worst factor that has kept the computer community stuck in The Dark Age of Computing. The sooner Microsoft disintegrates the better. The future is sick of waiting.

Could never stomach that silly rule-driven garishness. Somewhere in the back of my mind I suspect they do it just to show they still own the language and are not American. No proof of that, but that’s what I suspect.

Reporting was a joke but we got by lol. I’d dump data from a database and work chunks of it in Quattro Pro. We also had this funky inhouse DOS app that took comma delimited files and produced these ugly charts.

Once Excel was able to connect to various databases and they integrated pivot tables and pivot charts I was sold. Its gotten better with each release.

Its easy and quick to connect to a database, dump a massive amount of data and then quickly plot/chart/report it into a format that makes sense and gives me answers. If the data changes I just open the spreadsheet and refresh the data link and its current.

With the 64-bit version you can have over 1 million rows of data on a single worksheet. Using power pivots you can rip through that data in a matter of seconds.

I’ve never seen another spreadsheet with the power of excel. Nothing is even close.

Your old boss sounds like a real data animal lol. I didn’t know anyone that crazy back in that day but I do know a few guys now that make some overly complex spreadsheets and I swear they do it just because they can, not because they need it. lol

And a serious question: What would people like you and my boss use before Excel? To me, whose SS experience is quite limited, it appears that Excel touches so many aspects of everyone’s day-to-day life in one form or another. I’m glad there are folks like you around who can use its power.

[sigh] Language evolves.

Apple’s software team needs to get its collective ass in gear. More powerful productivity application functions, less bloat. Ensure iOS touch applications work correctly, and make sure the separate Mac desktop applications work correctly, and don’t mix up the two … like Apple unfortunately seems to be attempting to do with Mac OS 10.8.

Excel has changed a lot over the years and there is a reason why it basically took over the data analysis market. Using Excel 2010 with Power Pivots is awesome. I can’t go back to anything before that version.

I haven’t seen what they’ve added to the latest Excel 2013 beta release but if they keep up the pace like they did with 2010 I’ll likely go to 2013 just for excel.

Not sure what BetaNews thinks it’s doing, hiring this guy to write for them – I suppose they simply enjoy the extra clicks they get (from this site and elsewhere) linking to his inflammatory writings.

Be very afraid.

Ultimately Apple putting out individual components for low $s per app (or even bundled free) along with OpenOffice tells the future.

That’s what he’s really good at.

This isn’t true, that only happens on Windows 7 x86 Surface tablets.

On Windows RT Surface tablets there is no old Windows, there is only Metro.

WinRT (i.e. ARM tablet devices) cannot run this version of Office revealed yesterday.

What Microsoft failed to show yesterday was Office Metro edition. It’s been MIA for quite some time.

I won’t need to tell people to get a Mac; Win8/Server 2012 unsells itself.

And at the same time.. if you look it up, some folks say singular, some folks say plural, depending.

politics plural of pol·i·tics (Noun)
Noun: The activities associated with the governance of a country or area. The activities of governments concerning the political relations between countries.

My Mac Dictionary says:
politics |ˈpäləˌtiks| plural noun
the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, esp. the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power:

So I’m gonna go with MDN usage. You might wanna run this by the right nut.

Wait—it’s just the zombie movie I’m watching…

Thanks…

Fixed.

Start with one note and build a great viewer and editor for existing office docs. If they try to make the desktop version a hybrid they’ll screw it up and alienate their core users.

Office is too complex and big for the tablet in its current incarnation. Start out simple with a new build for tablets and go from there.

I have no desire for full blown versions of excel, word etc on an ipad or any other “tablet” but I could use a great viewing app that is capable of doing editing (even if the editing is limited)