Quattro Pro vrs Excel 1

[Escher]

My first post here, but from my quick look through and almost invariably Excel is mentioned. Am I a dinosaur still using QuattroPro for spreadsheeting? Is Excel relatively more stable than QPRO?

 

[IRstuff]

That's no longer really germane, is it? If you go to your local computer bookstore, you won't find much in the way of QPRO or 1-2-3 books.

If you're a hermit, then it doesn't really matter. If you need or have to exchange data, you need to be using Excel, since that's essentially the lingua franca of spreadsheets.

TTFN

 

[DaveVikingPE]

You're a dinosaur.

But don't sweat it... Quattro Pro works just fine and, from my understanding, you can mix and match, to a certain degree, Excel and QP.

That being said, I learned (and if I may be so bold to say...) became a spreadsheet "expert" using Quattro Pro - for Windows (that would be simply "Windows," not 3.1...). I've used QP, Wingz (Macintosh), Lotus, Microsoft Works, Claris Works and even the Unix "ss" spreadsheet at one time or another.

But plainly, Excel has won the day, the battle and the war. I don't like to praise M$ software at all (I HATE M$ Word and don't use it, quite clunky and likes to "take over" my machine, Mac or PC), but Excel is the best spreadsheet around. Coupled with VBA and Active X and an engineer is pretty much unlimited.

However, if you are happy with QP and it serves your purpose and pays the bills, stick with it.

 

[meintsi]

Quattro Pro is still much better at the graphics end for displaying your results.

I've used QP since version 7 and still use QP2000 for almost all of my graphs.

When I started using Excel (Office 2000 & XP), the only major difference is the (re)learning of where the commands are hidden. I use excel for compatability reasons now but if you don't need indepth VB controls, QP is just as good.

Also, since I own a registered copy of both, and have all of the updated translators between them, I still import my data into QP because the graphic tools are that much better and they (when complete) import back into MS fairly easily.

Remember...
"If you don't use your head,
your going to have to use your feet."

 

[GregLocock]

I'm a closet QPro fan, and agree entirely about the graphs.

However, the Solver in Excel seems much better than the equivalent I used in (an admittedly older version of) QPro, and the solver is pretty damn useful.

To be honest they both get the job done, I'd have to buy QPro myself, so Bill wins. Again.


Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[Escher]

Thanks for all the replies to my post.
Don't get me wrong I find QPRO 9.0 quite satisfactory and have been using it since version 3 (Lotus before that). My specific question is that I often find QPRO generates 'fatal' errors.... and QPRO doesn't translate Excel reliably. So I am considering converting!!

Does Excel have as many glitches?

 

[Flareman]

I've been using Qpro almost since day 1 although I too started with Lotus. I agree that the graphs, and charts are much easier to handle in QP than in Excel. However, I do have problems with QP9.0. So much so that I ditched it in favor of QP8.0 which is as stable as I need for some pretty big calcs.
However, I'm somewhat aggravated by the "lingua franca" aspects of big M$, and have started to migrate some of my work into Excel. That's something of a bugbear because I have to go through a "Qpro for Dos" stage otherwise they won't convert.

 

[GregLocock]

QPro 5 was less stable than the equivalent Excel release, and that was about when I switched over. Excel could handle huge spreadsheets more reliably, in my opinion.

My current "Apollo mission from LEO to LLO insertion" spreadsheet is 32 Mb, takes a while to Solve, but has never crashed the system, so I am very happy with Excel's stability. The graphs still look crap, of course.

I started with 123 on an XT, it was love at first sight!


Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[roberttx]

Hi,

I did my first steps in 1-2-3 also, actually I taught it at school and helped me a lot with my engineering thesis. Then I took a bold look into Quattro because of the graphics.

Finally, my bosses used Excel and I completely forgot 1-2-3, but still remember it as a speed demon.

Roberttx.
ps. Excel is not that bad, and you can still manage to change between both programs with lots of help from Excel.