All 4 entries tagged Software

Numbers vs Excel

Writing about web page http://www.apple.com/iwork

When I bought my shiny new Mac Book I also bought a copy of iWork 08, Apple’s equivalent of Office for the Mac. Let’s not beat about the bush, it doesn’t pretend to be a corporate productivity suite, it doesn’t pretend to be a hard core data manipulation tool interfacing to a million and one large scale corporate applications. It is a simple spreadsheet for people doing simple things at home and in the small office. I use Excel at work and it does what I need it too and it’s familiar. You can make excel do some pretty amazing things with Macros and I still think Office is arguably the second greatest range of products MS produce (Windows Server system with Exchange and SQL server comes first), but it’s a bit hardcore for what I do outside work and truth be told in work too. Thus I thought I’d give Numbers a try, since I already have a licence for Office 2004 for Mac I wasn’t losing anything by trying.

So on first impressions what do we have. Numbers has a very clean interface and a very slick interface. Someone who is not a hardcore spreadsheet-aholic was clearly consulted in the design process because formatting a cell and colouring it is much easier than in Excel. The disadvantage of this is of course that die hard Excel fans will look for things where they expect to find them and they have moved and it slows you down a little until you realise where things are located.

The sort/filter functions work somewhat differently to Excel but they are dynamic and only one click away. I did discover that if you ask it to filter for something in a large list of data in a huge sheet (5600 rows of data in 42 columns direct from SAP) then it can hang for a long time, something Excel doesn’t. The same can be said if you copy a row of filtered data and then try to insert paste it to the filtered list. If you do this it’s clever enough to know that you can’t just insert into a filtered field, and if you mistakenly pick insert column it will crash. I tried this on a table with 12 columns and 1000 rows to be sure too and sure enough there was a crash. The filters are smart and work differently but they aren’t as smart and controllable as Excel’s

Most formulae from Excel transfer over but custom formatting and some formulas won’t. Building your own simple formula is much easier for a non guru in Numbers. It even offers you the common formulas to build from all the time and the truth of it is most people do little more than add, subtract, average and count in Excel. Complex stuff and VBA is a no no though for obvious reasons already stated. General reading of excel files even those containing 18,000 lines of VBA is fine, though you get warned that it will not work with macros. Some of the complex graphs in Excel don’t work either, but you are warned about incompatibilities when opening the file.

The workspace in Numbers is rather radical because you grow the table to suit you, rather than using the stoic 65536 rows and columns up to IV that Excel 2000 gave. Grow it how you want and move things around like it’s a page in a DTP application. Your graphs are independent of the data sheet so you can lay those anywhere too. Multimedia support is as expected, excellent with easy adding of anything. The basic provided templates are also good for things like loan calculations, mortgage comparisons and the like. More useful than Excel’s anyway for home use.

So overall Numbers does exactly what it says on the tin and if you keep track of your accounts or something in Excel rather than paying MS more money and buying Office 2008 for Mac, give iWork a go as it will do everything the average user would want more easily than Excel can. On the other hand if you work at a serious accounting firm and in order to do your accounts you have VBA code out of your ears, stick with Excel 2003, it’s the superior tool technically. Or try Mathematica… now there’s a clever manipulation tool.

Christopher Hinds : 12 Oct 2007 00:34 |  Tags: Apple Excel Microsoft Software |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ampheus Accounts

As I mentioned a few days ago I have a computer based project in mind for whilst I am in Indianapolis and beyond. For the last few years I have been managing my accounts using Microsoft Money 2005. That of course as expected doesn’t exists for the Mac, and Intuit’s Quicken hasn’t been sold in the UK since 2005. That leaves us without a good personal finance program for the Mac and without one for the PC now too, as MS stopped developing Money for the UK in 2005 too. Quite what was in the financial air in 2005 I don’t know but it must have been quite strong. Therefore I have set myself a little project to write an application that allows me to generate the kind of reports that Money allows while being more platform agnostic. Unlike MS, Apple and others I recognise through being a geek that people like to move their data from computer to computer. Some even like to access it from more than one machine.

My plan is thus to create a platform agnostic personal accounts package that allows multiple users, access from any platform and quick, easy use. I plan to start by defining the user interface and then defining the system behind it once I know what I want it to do. Bit of a contrast to the usual approach of bung in all the features and then decide how to access them. I want the program to be totally extensible too though, so it could be expanded to manage business accounts too for the SME. I don’t expect to displace SAP in the Enterprise or Intuit in most companies but I do expect to provide something of interest to smaller companies. Who knows I may even commercialise a business version though I doubt it. The plan is for the software to be an Open Source application. I envisage the structure being:

• Java development to allow it to be platform agnostic. Development will be done on Mac OS.X but testing will be under Windows (2000/XP/Vista), Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora Core) and Mac OS.X. The intention is for it to be a “thick” client application as most people will be uncomfortable installing a web server on their local machine for client access (and if they aren’t, they should be from a security point of view)
• Back end is an SQL database via Hibernate with the options of Oracle, MySQL, PostgresSQL and SQL Server 2005. All of these are available in free or commercial editions and the intention is to develop primarily on OS.X/Oracle and then test with MySQL on Fedora Core, PostgresSQL on Ubuntu and SQL Server 2005 on Windows. Hopefully Hibernate will work as it says on the tin, but we shall see.
• Two installation options: choice of Standalone (install SQL/Server and client to machine) and Client/Server model where you can select to install the Server (with or without SQL) or the Client.

Initial Features list:

• Manage multiple users securely
• Unlimited number of accounts/entries
• Double entry, either in full or as per MS Money
• Automated reports based on categories/dates
• Budgeting
• Scheduled transactions
• Auto save with user selectable version roll back
• Loans/Asset tracking including depreciation schedules
• Output to PDF
• Use customisable interface e.g. like Money home page

Features that might come later:

• VAT support
• Foreign currency support
• Online banking support
• Share dealing

I will now be filing this as a Source Forge project…

Christopher Hinds : 25 Sep 2007 22:17 |  Tags: Databases Java Programming Projects Software |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Thank you for using Year–2006, your licence is now expired

[01] What did you do in 2006 that you have never done before?
Corporate Hat: Start a job with a large multinational engineering company (it’s a great job with prospects)
Personal: Lost my virginity (it was worth waiting for)

[02] Did you keep all of last years resolutions?
I didn’t make any last year, I couldn’t be bothered

[03] Have you any resolutions for next year?

• Less apathy would seem appropriate
• Make sure Emma always feels loved and happy
• See my core people at least every 3 months
• Carry on learning

[04] What countries did you visit?
I’ve been to Manchester… ooooh and I’ve been to Leeds… they must count.

[05] What would you like to have in 2007 that you didn’t have in 2006?
I could say a new car, and I would expect that to be achieved. I know the current one isn’t 3 years old yet but still. I would also say a decent savings pot to start for a house deposit etc

[06] What date in 2006 will remain etched in your memory?
29th May. I stopped being single.

[07] What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I think it would have to be getting a first class degree. I was honestly not quite expecting that along with everything else I was doing.

[08] What was your biggest failure?
Not asking Emma out sooner

[09] Did you suffer any illness or injury?
Beyond colds and self inflicted flesh wounds on a weekly basis, no.

[10] What was the best thing you bought?
Hmmm…
For the nation: Car tyres… they keep me on the road
For me: Diesel. It allows me to see my friends when I want
For my friends: The Audi A8 for Final Fling
Overall: A contribution to an iPod Mini in Pink for Miss Holt. It wasn’t the most I spent this year but it was easily the best thing I could have done.

[11] Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Mine? Failing that let’s say New Labour.

[12] Where did most of your money go?
1. Motoring – £3133.84 or 23.4% of what I spent in 2006
2. Food shopping – £913.62 or 6.8%
3. Meals out – £775.84 or 5.8%
4. Presents for people – £747.86 or 5.5%
There’s also a whole wedge of Cash in there, but I don’t know where that went specifically. Thankfull that’s dropping now I’m not at uni. Yes I’m anal. Yes, I do my accounts daily.

[13] What did you get really really really excited about?
Emma ;-) oh and achieving things

[14] What songs will always remind you of 2006?
Bon Jovi – Bed of Roses

[15] Compared to this time last year are you :
[A] Fatter or thinner?
Fatter, I’m eating the same but not humping gear around the union

[B] Happier or sadder?
Happier

[C] Richer or poorer?
Richer

[16] What do you wish you’d done more of?
High level ProAudio

[17] What do you wish you’d done less of?
Being indecisive, I think.

[18] How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it with Miss Holt and her family.

[19] Which blog user did you meet for the first time?
Good question don’t know. I met a lot of music centre people at the Gala concert – so I expect one of them blogs and met me and I didn’t know.

[20] Did you fall in love in 2006?
Yes

[21] How many one night stands?
Well technically 2, but it doesn’t really count because they were both with the same person and that person is now my lovely girlfriend of 7 months… it just took me nearly 3 months to work out that was what I wanted. Retard.

[22] What was your favourite TV show?
Frasier, Due South, Yes Minister, Top Gear

[23] Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don’t hate people. If they don’t like me that’s fine, but why should I waste effort feeling bad?

[24] What was/were the best books you read?
The Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister books I got around the 25th, I’m about to start Bob McCarthy’s “Sound Systems Design and Optimisation” too. Oh er you meant fiction. I don’t really read that. I’m sure I should, it might expand my vocabulary.

[25] What was your greatest musical discovery?
Middle C. But then I discovered Musicians knew it was there all along.

[26] What did you want and get?
A job

[27] What did you want and not get?
Range Rover Sport 3.6TDV8 HST – in black please or Rimini Red.

[28] What was your favourite film this year?
The only new film I’ve seen was Bond, and I thought it was good, if over filled with product placement.

[29] What did you do on your birthday and how old were you?
I was 23 and I drove an S4 Avant to Canterbury and an A4 3.0TDI back. I know this because I had to buy fuel for both and I have the details in my accounts.

[30] What one thing would have made your year more satisfying?
shrug

[31] How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
Influenced by Miss Evans and Robin. Otherwise same old same old, Jeans, Polo shirts, Jumpers, Shirts. Still a label snob though.

[32] What kept you sane?
Not drinking, smoking or doing drugs. Well I had alcohol a few times, but less than 5 in 2006 total. I’m done with that now.

[33] Which celebrity did you fancy the most?
I dunno… say Sarah Alexander, she’s hot.

[34] Which political issue stirred you the most?
Road Charging

[35] Who did you miss?
Grandma

[36] Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned this year?
It’s not how often you speak to friends that makes them special it’s what you say and how you feel when you do.

[37] Quote a song lyric that sums up your year…
‘Well I’d trade in all the rest of my days,
Just the mere reflection of your face,
For one shining moment…
With you, somebody like you,
With you, somebody just like you
Keith Urban – You (or somebody just like you)

Christopher Hinds : 01 Jan 2007 19:39 |  Tags: Computers Engineering Life The World Me Meme Software Sound Technology Work |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Excel

I would just like to say that I will never be an Excel expert and trying to get some little answers out of the bloody program using a few formulae for compound interest is impossible. I hope the bloke who wrote the formula section of it has something slightly unpleasant happen to him like having his testes caught in a door… something like that.

Christopher Hinds : 22 Oct 2006 18:54 |  Tags: Software |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem