Nice People Thread No. 14, all Nice and Proper

LydiaJ

vivatifosi wrote: »

FWIW I have long thought of Excel as one of Microsoft's better products. For most uses it has always done what I need. It is much less frustrating than Word...

Oh yes.

vivatifosi wrote: »

It does seem that propensity to use Excel should be up there with being Jewish, having strong opinions on mushrooms and proximity to Herts on the NPT demographics list.

Count me in!

kabayiri wrote: »

A friend does a lot of work on one of the open source alternatives to Microsoft Office. A lot of developers give their time freely still.

His view is that there is very little that can't be done with the free versions. They are just as competent.

Last time I was somewhere where they had the free ones, the spreadsheet thingy didn't have any way for me to write code to automate it, so I had to bring my laptop into work to do it on Excel. That was quite some time ago, though.

These days I want MS Office at home not only for VBA but for compatibility with my school, DS's school, DD's school ...

GDB2222

Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall announce engagement
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35289355

One side of me says congratulations to the happy couple, and the other more cynical side of me says !!!!!!! I hope he did not lie to her about his age.

Generali

kabayiri wrote: »

A friend does a lot of work on one of the open source alternatives to Microsoft Office. A lot of developers give their time freely still.

His view is that there is very little that can't be done with the free versions. They are just as competent.

The real cost comes in retraining. People become entrenched with what they know.

I try to be neutral when it comes to these sort of products. I'll use whatever is installed on one of the machines. Often, Google Docs is completely adequate and I can access anywhere.

I'm always bemused by these Microsoft vs <something else> wars which used to rage long and hard on the fora. Life is really too short !

The biggest cost to me is losing the network effects of using Excel.

If I use an Excel spreadsheet I can send it to my colleagues, clients and suppliers and be absolutely confident that they will see the same thing as me and all my formulae will continue to work.

I can send my staff off to a training course and be sure that they are learning what I need them to.

If we are all using very similar tools rather than the same ones I lose that immediately. I wouldn't risk that.

ivyleaf

I used Excel for a while in my last job. I had to be shown how to use it, having never "done a course" or anything
A lot of us older ones found ourselves in the awkward situation of never having done any sort of IT at school, and suddenly finding ourselves being expected to use Word and Excel etc with no training at all, because managers who were younger had learned it all at school and simply couldn't conceive of anyone not knowing how to use them.

I don't use it now as I simply don't need to.

Generali

At the risk of sounding heartless is anyone else feeling that just maybe this outpouring of grief from a bunch of people that never met David Bowie is a little bit overdone?

It's like some sort of spiritual incontinence that occasionally spreads across the UK.

zagubov

Generali wrote: »

At the risk of sounding heartless is anyone else feeling that just maybe this outpouring of grief from a bunch of people that never met David Bowie is a little bit overdone?

It's like some sort of spiritual incontinence that occasionally spreads across the UK.

It's difficult to convey what a breath of fresh air he was at the time.
Plus he had a real knack for handling his own media exposure so the public didn't have a chance to tire of him.

silvercar

Generali wrote: »

At the risk of sounding heartless is anyone else feeling that just maybe this outpouring of grief from a bunch of people that never met David Bowie is a little bit overdone?

It's like some sort of spiritual incontinence that occasionally spreads across the UK.

Stages of grief. Soon they will be jokes, then there will be criticism, then people will start being nice again. Then he will be history.

DS1 says he just wishes they would get out of Brixton.

silvercar

PasturesNew wrote: »

Before Excel was clearly the only/top spreadsheet software, Lotus was "big in the market".... but even though they were a big company they've all but disappeared over the years.

My first experience of spreadsheets was with an integrated software package that I can't even remember the name of now, in about 1987. Then with Lotus 1-2-3 in ~1990, which I got some Level II "popular qualification/certificate of the day" in. After that the world seemed mostly "all about Excel" and Lotus really fell out of favour; I think Lotus was mostly the corporate world; I remember in 1997 it was mostly what the big insurance company I was working for were using and had used to develop all their in-house calculators.

I remember using Lotus 123, in the 80s.

Adds to list: (a) I did computer science A level before the internet (b) in a pre-excel era.

I needed to print a word document through open office on my parents pc. It didn't print properly, the formatting was haywire and I couldn't modify it in Open Office.

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

At the risk of sounding heartless is anyone else feeling that just maybe this outpouring of grief from a bunch of people that never met David Bowie is a little bit overdone?

It's like some sort of spiritual incontinence that occasionally spreads across the UK.

Not heartless.

I think we can separate the different "David Bowies".

There was David Bowie, the family man to his relatives and close friends. Grief from the bereavement is entirely appropriate.

David Bowie, the pop artist, was just someone remote to the vast majority of us. His work will have influenced many to varying extents, but then so did Margaret Thatcher's work!

I think our media over-sentimentalise some things because we seem to be a nation increasingly looking back at our past, rather than look forward.

I want to know what the next disruptive music influence is going to be, hopefully something driven by the UK. Punk/New Romantics/Mods/HipHop : they were all decades ago.

What have we got now? Adele singing about being dumped by her latest bloke.

kabayiri

I've always hated spreadsheets.

Now I think I'm just indifferent to them.

Maybe that's progress

When the gas industry deregulated you wouldn't believe how many people were maintaining their own little spreadsheets; essentially mini databases.

It's little wonder they had tens of thousands of data errors. I remember one tag location of a meter point which turned out to be in the middle of a pond in a park!! I guess the ducks weren't paying for their share of the gas.