On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 16:50 +0000, Andrew Brown wrote: > Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: > > > While its obviously desirable to improve all aspects of performance and > > the compactness of the code, I think marketing should also make it clear > > to potential customers that spreadsheets that take 10s of seconds to > > open in Excel and minutes in Calc are a very small and specialised > > section of the market. I have been modelling the pay and tax for a small > > business this week in Calc on Linux and this takes under 10 seconds to > > load from double clicking a desktop icon including loading up Calc > > itself. > > But he didn't say it took three hours to load the spreadsheet. He said it > took three hours to run one particular set of calculations on it, which in > Excel run in thirty seconds. Nor is this going to be simple to fix. Michael > Meeks is clearly a serious hacker, and all his efforts only got the time > down to an hour.
So how many spreadsheet users have calculations that are so complex that they take 30 seconds to run (even on Calc)? In the case of calculations in spreadsheets most people run it will be so quick you won't even notice. That is my point. Yes let's have everything faster, more compact and better than Excel but to be realistic for the vast majority of the target market its not going to make that much difference. How many posts do we get requesting an E-mail client? How many posts do we get saying OOo loads too slow? How many do we get saying the calculation of spreadsheets is too slow? Take a look at Xara in the graphics world. It renders graphics much faster than the opposition but its not got anywhere near the market share of its competitors. I'm all for efficient software but I don't think we need to panic too much about this particular issue. -- Ian Lynch www.theINGOTs.org www.opendocumentfellowship.org www.schoolforge.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
