There is absolutely nothing fancy, colorful, exciting, or gee-whiz
about Gnumeric, the Open Source spreadsheet that abrogates any need
to install the Excel spreadsheet in Microsoft Office. But do you
think that a thesaurus is essential to crunching numbers? Excel has
a thesaurus. Gnumeric doesn't. How about translating from one
language to another? You can do it in Excel. You can't in Gnumeric.
Do you need to calculate the modified Besseli function in (x)?
Excel lets you. Gnumeric?. Oh, hold it. So will Gnumeric. In fact
when you get down to the more obscure spreadsheet operations I, and
possibly you, have never heard of before, Gnumeric can be as
esoteric as best of spreadsheets.
The important thing is whether Gnumeric gives the right answers.
Frankly, I'm no judge when it comes to financial derivatives, Monte
Carlo simulations, linear and nonlinear equations, or, for that
matter, balancing my checkbook. Gnumeric's developers have math
whizzes in to check it out and the spreadsheet got the same answers
as the high-priced spread, only faster.
I will give it to Excel for its fancier and more colorful graphs
and charts, no mean consideration if you hope to get approval for
that new project by wowing the board with drop-dead graphics
instead of simply dead numbers.
--Ron White