So, I couldn't wait. And bought some new Apple stuff today.

[Captain Angry]

1: The new-new Airport Extreme. This is an 802.11a/b/g/n model, with gigabit upstream/downstream to the network.

2: iWork '08. The new spreadsheet software is what pushed me over the edge.

I have been using Office Mac 2004. I will delete it on Friday when the stuff arrives.

[LeftCoast]

1. How do you like the spreadsheet?

Excel is one of the few MS programs that I still use. I'd love to see them improve on Excel like they did PwrPoint. Keynote is (in my opinion) vastly better than PP.

[Captain Angry]

2. I will know in 24 hours.

It's scheduled for delivery in the morning.

I am a spreadsheet junkie, so I should know soon.

[moggie]

3. I've just tried opening an Excel spreadsheet

I use spreadsheets very little, but there's one I need to use for work regularly, so I've just tried importing it into Numbers. It generated these warnings:

Import Warning - Print area isn’t supported and the setting was removed.
Import Warning - Print settings for row and column titles aren’t supported and were removed.
Import Warning - Data validation isn’t supported and was removed. The last cell values were imported.
Import Warning - Sorting criteria were removed.
Import Warning - Password protection was removed from a worksheet.
Import Warning - Fit to Page isn’t supported and the setting was removed.
Import Warning - Unsupported conditional formatting on 66 cells was removed from Table 1 on “Sheet1.”
Import Warning - Filename fields aren’t supported in headers or footers and were removed.

So the Excel compatibility is far from complete.

[Captain Angry]

4. Interesting.

So far, I've only played a little.

But I like what I see. It may not be business-ready, but for home users/students it will do the job.

I have a feeling that the power users will need to use Excel for a while. But considering that Microsoft has been selling a spreadsheet for 15+ years, and Apple has had this one out for a week. We'll see if they try to go for the corporate user eventually.

[Captain Angry]

5. I just whipped up a spreadsheet

I am liking this new program. It is certainly geared more toward presentation than hard number crunching.

But I can create tables, place them wherever I want, put photos, cross-table calculations, etc.

So far, so good.

But now the hard part. I need to save it as Excel and see how badly mangled it gets. I haven't had the nerve to do it yet since this layout looks so much nicer.

[supernova]

6. make a copy

and experiment with the copy file. That way, you won't damage your original.

I'm curious about this because I work on a Mac and I would potentially be dealing w/ MS Office clients.

[Captain Angry]

7. I exported it as a PDF and it looks awesome.

Exported as an XLS file, and it was poopy.


Here's what I did.

I created a Numbers document. It consisted of three tables laid out on the workspace.

When I exported it to Excel, it put each table on its own Worksheet within the document and created a Table of Contents tab with links.

So, the layout and formatting of the workspace were lost. But, the data and the formatting of each individual worksheet was maintained. Furthermore, all of the references are all there as well, so I can still change data between worksheets and it flows to the others.

If you PM me an email address, I'll email you the PDF and the XLS so you can see what it *should* look like, and how Excel renders it. The data is just my GPA calculator for my degree. Nothing private or fancy.