hillman@uservx.afwl.af.mil (05/29/91)
A users comparison of Full Impact 2.0 vs Excel 2.2, part 1 of ?
From now on Full Impact 2.0 will be abbreviated FI.
Table of Contents for Part 1
1. PROCEDURES AND GROUND RULES.
2. My history and the depth of this review
3. Summary of Prodigy review by Charles Gajeway, and this one
4. Arrow key editing
5. Calculation in formula bar
6. Cell #Us while scrolling
7. Cell notes
8. Clipboard to word processor
9. Color: numbers and text, custom formating
10. Fill vs replicate and $ => absolute reference
11. Finding text, numbers, & formulas
12 Function groups
13 Goto
14 Graphing
15 Help
16 Icons for common tasks
17 Import/exporting
18 Macro writing
19 Manual smell
20 Math co-processor support & speed
21 Max sheet size
22 Numbers as text
23 Paragraphs
24 Radian vs degree
25 Reverse operations like fill up and fill left
26 Row height, max rows, columns on screen at once
27 Simple object drawing
28 Sorting
29 Status Bar
30 Titles on screen & on printouts & Split screens
31. Overall main manual organization
32. System 7 compatibility
33. Future
34. Prices
35. Company addresses, network & e-mail address
1. PROCEDURES AND GROUND RULES. If everyone who wants to further comment on
this review did so with a normal followup I think things would get very messy.
I suggest the following. If you want to comment on a particular subject just
add a new item to this group with an appropriate title such as: Ex vs FI:
importing. People will not be able to automatically follow the thread but they
can use the search command. In your comments refer back to this article. I
think readers will get a better feel for YOUR subject matter than just Rre:
Excel vs Full Impact. If you totally disagree with me or want to say something
(or anything) to me personally do it with a reply. Also see the future section
at the end of this review.
2. My history and the depth of this review: I bought my first computer in 1978,
a SS-50 bus system (SWTP) running the FLEX DOS. This system used a Motorola
6800 cpu. I upgraded the system to a Motorola 6809 and made several hardware
and software patches. I built and debugged a 64K memory board of a friendUs
design. Besides Fortran, Pascal and numerical methods courses in college my
biggest programming effort were print drivers for the word processor
Stylograph. The print drivers filtered Diablo escape sequences and drove
several impact printers allowing bold, subscript etc. They also added
scientific symbols. The driver for the Diablo added the same symbol set and
bidirectional printing. They were written to print rough drafts and the final
version of my dissertation in Optical Science. The spreadsheet for this DOS
was called Dynacalc and many people still use it on the OS9 DOS (See
comp.sys.OS9). I never got a PC since I felt what I had was just as powerful
and I was familiar with it! We got a MAC II at work in 1988. In the summer of
1990 I got tired of spending more time fixing hardware and repairing disk
crashes than using the SWTP machine. I bought a MAC IIsi as soon as they hit
the streets. I use Excel at work and Full Impact at home. (I had nothing to
do with the choice of Excel at work and I bought SmartBundle w/FI 1.1 for home
because of the price, and upgraded to Full Impact 2.0S. The "S" stands for
sound capabilities)
After using both, I didnU't think the reviews in The Macintosh Bibl
were fair. I also have heard for years that Excel was fantastic and was the
leading spreadsheet. I feel that Excel has some real competition. Also note
that I now know (I didn'Ut when I said I would do this comparison) that Excel
3.0 and system 7.0 have been released. Excel 3.0 fills some of the short-
comings I have found with 2.2. If the shortcomings below are important to you,
it may be worth some investigation before buying one or the other.
My main use of Excel so far has been at work to enter experimental data
for roughly 100 experiments. I enter in roughly 20 parameters (or
measurements) and reduce these to "meaningful values". From these "meaningful
values" several plots are made. I use Full Impact at home to print invoices
for my photography company and my wife keeps the records for the church
preschool. She tracks about 15 employees and has an annual budget near
$100,000.00. She was a near neophyte to spreadsheets when she started.
Therefore, let me state that this review will be mostly on the little
things that make the two programs easy (or frustrating) to learn and use. I
cannot possibly go into each function of both programs here. I will try to
list the ones that are missing. If there is a particular odd function that you
need you may be best to check ads, with the manufacture, or with a local dealer
to be sure which spreadsheet has it. Let me further state I have also used
Supercalc and Enable on PC's. I have not read Excel's nor FI's manuals fully;
in most cases I just had to get things done. I am writing this with my word
processor, Excel & FI all loaded at once so I can try things then write the
results.
Finally let me state that for most examples I will refer to rows or
columns specifically, in most cases the commands will also work for the other
dimension.
3. Summary of reviews
Prodigy review by
Charles Gajeway My feelings
Aspect Full Impact Excel Full Impact Excel
Overall Performance *** *** *** ***
Documentation *** ** *** **
Error-Handling **** *** **** **
Ease of Use ** *** *** **
Support ** *** *** **
**** = Excellent * = Poor
At the end of each section each program will be given a grade. 10-I don't see
how to improve it, 5-more than adequate, 0-missing or impossible to use. My
totals show FI: 151, Excel 131.
4. Arrow keys for editing formulas. Very often while editing a formula you
want to move over a few characters and it is nice to use the arrow keys to do
this. Excel simply does not let you do this. The arrow keys enter the formula
and select the next cell in that direction. In FI the default is that the
arrow keys move the cursor (I beam) to allow editing, option arrow enters the
formula in the cell and selects the next cell in that direction. You can set
FI to act like Excel but then at least option arrow still allows editing
movement. (Excel does not use option arrow for any command so this does not
interfere with FI's imitation of Excel.) Grade: FI 9, Excel 1
5. Calculate what is in the formula window. I have used this a few times. To
save space in a formula say you have 2*pi()*sin(30) typed in. You want to
replace 2*pi with 6.24. In Excel just select 2*pi() in the formula window then
cmnd_= (cmnd=command/apple key). You'll then get 6.24...*sin(30). You can
then undo this or enter the formula. FI does not allow this feature. Grade:
FI:0, Excel 9.
6. cell #Us in scroll boxes. FI puts the cell reference of the cell that is in
the upper left corner in the scroll boxes. This is handy since the scroll bars
represent the total available spreadsheet, not just used cells. This makes it
easier to find a cell when scrolling. Excel puts the home cell number in the
selection box which is in the upper left of the screen and is hard to watch
while dragging the vertical scroll box. In Excel the scroll bar just represents
the currently filled cells or if shift is pressed it represents the whole range
available. Grade: FI 6, Excel 6
7. Cell notes. Excel has a feature that allows you to put in notes on a
particular cell. Say you have an voucher spreadsheet to be filled out by all
travelers. By looking at the note employees may be reminded on what can be
claimed and what can not. The notes are pretty hard to find, but you can find
them under window/show info or formula/notes. FI does this by sound (need
6.0.7 and appropriate hardware). By clicking on a cell, a voice can come up
and tell you what can and can't be claimed. You can choose between 3 sound
qualities, with the poorest a max length of 17 seconds and the best a max of 3
seconds. These really eat up RAM and disk space. The example 1 page
spreadsheet with 7 sounds and some graphics took up over 300K on disk. Grade:
FI 6, Excel 5
8. Clipboard to word processor: Both work almost the same way. If you cut and
paste an array of cells to a word processor, the values (not formulas) are
pasted in with tabs separating rows. The differences is that if you go back to
the spreadsheet and paste, Excel now just pastes values where FI still pastes
formulas (or values). Grade: FI 6, Excel 4
9. Color numbers and text, custom formating. FI controls the color represent
ation of numbers through a preferences box. You can choose a separate color
for negative numbers, positive numbers, and text. This is for the program and
applies to all spreadsheets until you change it. BOTH programs allow you to
makeup custom formats with names. You can define a color & format for
positive, zero, negative, and text. For accountants you can have ()'s
surrounding negative numbers. You can make up your own date format allowing
dates to be yet a different color. FI also allows simple arithmetic (+,-
,*,/,modulus,^) operations on the number before displaying. For instance
column A could have angles in radians but be premultiplied by 180/pi so the
values are displayed in degrees. If someone was using someone else's
spreadsheet this could really mess them up! Grade: FI 9, Excel 6
10. Fill vs replicate and $ -> absolute reference. What does that mean? I
have used spreadsheets on three different DOS's and I still like Dynacalc's
replicate command the best. You select the source cells, then the target
cells, then it goes through and asks you for each cell reference in the source
if you want it to be a relative or an absolute reference. You could copy C1:C5
to D1:D5 and have a reference be absolute, then to E1:E5 and have it be
relative. Both FI and Excel have taken the "$" approach. When you write your
formula(s) you must think ahead and include appropriate $'s. Usually I end up
copying a cell only to find out I really wanted one reference to be absolute.
I have to delete (or undo), edit the source, and then redo the copy command.
Grade: FI 5, Excel 5
11. Finding text, numbers, & formulas. A big difference here. Excel has a
pretty nice find command. You can look for a part or whole item in text or
formula, or for a value. If a cell was 3+4 you could find 3 by looking in
formulas or 7 by looking in values. Excel also has a replace command. You can
also look in your cell notes. As far as I can tell FI only has a find command
for macro text. This is much to my chagrin. I get upset when software for a
64K machine written in the early 80's has USEFUL functions that software
written in the 90's does not! Come on guys, get with it!!! Grade: FI 0, Excel
9
12. Function groups. These are a sole feature of FI. Several calculators on
the market have plug in packs than expand the calculator's ROM, these function
groups are sort of like those. They install with a separate application that
works much like the font/DA installer. Developers can write code in C and
Pascal to make a new function for FI called XMACROs. Several of these XMACROs
can be loaded (and unloaded) as a group in a function group. FI comes with a
Extended Function set that adds a few functions so you can load almost any
EXCEL spreadsheet. Grade: FI 9, Excel 0
13. Goto. Both programs allow you to go to: a cell, a group of cells (with
them selected), or a named range. The difference is how it is called. Excel
uses Go To under the formula menu or cmnd_G. Both programs show the currently
selected cell, range or named range in the selection box. In FI you just click
on the selection box and enter the cell, range, or name where to want to go.
This seems more "MACish". Grade: FI 9, Excel 7
14. Graphing. Another big difference here. I had no trouble making a graph
with FI. With Excel I wanted to plot X vs Y1, Y2. After reading the manual
several time about Excel's series formula for describing a chart for about 2
hours I simply gave up. I copied the data to the clipboard and imported into
Cricket Graph (which I had not used before) and had my plot in about 5 minutes.
Now I have reread the manual under scatter plots and it is much more automatic
but still not simple. Follow these steps:
a. Select the data you want to plot, 3 columns for x vs Y1, Y2
b. Choose Copy data to clipboard
c. Create a new spreadsheet and choose chart button
d. Choose Paste Special from the Edit menu, in the dialog box
choose categories in first column.
e. From the Gallery menu choose Scatter, choose the format you
want like log axis, lines connecting data points etc.
Could you have done this without referring to the manual? The on line help
does not tell you about choosing categories in the dialog box. In FI you just:
a. select the Y data you want plotted, assuming the x data is to
the left of the first column of Y data.
b. Select the second row of icons
c. click on the scatter chart icon
This just seemed more intuitive to me and I performed this without referring to
the manual. I don't think this is just me. Just about everyone I have talked
to has had a hard time plotting x-y data with Excel. Charts in Excel are on
completely different spreadsheets, you can't integrate a chart into a report
with a table of values. Excel 3.0 says you can. FI also has several 3-d plots
on which you can easily change the perspective. Excel 2.2 has no 3d graphics
but 3.0 is suppose to have them. Grade: FI 9, Excel 6
15. Help (online). FI has a full help menu thru the apple menu. Excel has
context sensitive help. Select a menu item, type cmnd_?, and when you let go
of the mouse button, help for that menu item is displayed. You can easily
change topics from there. Grade: FI 5, Excel 8
16. Icons for common tasks. At the top of the FI screen is a row of icons for
such common tasks as: print, copy, paste, move, bold, save, currency format.
You can toggle to a second row of icons that represent pie chart, scatter
chart, line chart ....; enlarge view; reduce view; paragraph; draw line,
circle; ..... When you start to enter a formula these icons change to sum, +,-
,*....., 1, square root, parenthesis, etc. You can change these icons to any
function/command you may need more often. Excel 2.2 does not support this but
3.0 claims that it does. Grade: FI 9, Excel 0
17. Import/exporting. Both programs seem to import/export to dBase(DBF),
VisiCalc(DIF), Lotus 1-2-3(WKS) & (WK1), MultiPlan, Works, Excel 1.1(WYLK),
Excel 2.2 (BIFF) and ASCII Text. Excel's manual is pretty sketchy on formats
other than Lotus 1-2-3. The FI manual gives a full page on transferring from/to
each format. FI also supports DBASE Mac and for ASCII text transfers it lets
you change the characters that denote next column and row. You can also specify
characters to ignore. Excel cannot read FI files unless FI saved them in one
of the formats Excel can read. Excel can link data to MS Word 4.0 and use MS
mail facilities. Grade: FI 9, Excel 8
18. Macro writing. I wasn't very successful writing my first macro in Excel.
I had 3 data points for each measurement and wanted the average of the three.
For each measurement, instead of going to the formula menu, paste function,
scroll to average, and selecting it; I wanted a macro to do all this. Excel
did not like the average function to be entered without any data in it so
recording the macro did not work. I tried editing the macro without any luck.
I've tried the same with FI and didn't get very far either. It seems both
macro "compilers?" do not like to end in the middle of commands. The next best
thing is to use an independent macro recorder for this task. In FI using the
function menu to select AVG() did not seem to work but just typing AVG() then a
back arrow did (puts the insertion point between the () ). In EXCEL selecting
AVERAGE() from the menu seemed to work. Excel just has one type of macro which
are stored in files which you can load at will, several can be in one file. FI
has Global macros that load when you load the program and local macros that are
saved and loaded with a spreadsheet. Both programs allow easy live recording
and editing of a macro and keyboard shortcut assignments.
In all honesty macro writing in both programs are not exactly what I first
thought they were for, and can be much more complex and powerful than the
above. Maybe more on this in part two of this review? No grade yet!
19. Manual smell. The Macintosh Bible authors complained about the smell of
the FI manual. When I received my upgrade to 2.0 I immediately smelled it.
The smell doesn't bother me at all. No grade applicable.
20. Math co-processor support & speed. With just a few cell containing data and
selecting "select all" then clear (all), Excel executed in less than 2 seconds,
FI took 12, I think FI clears all cells where Excel is smart enough to just
clear those that had data in them. I can't find whether FI supports the math
co-processor, BUT THIS DOES NOT SLOW IT DOWN. A 50x50 matrix took about 8.6
seconds to recalculate in FI and 9.9 in Excel. The first row and column went
from -pi to pi, the matrix calculated LOG((ABS(EXP(SIN(X))+EXP(SIN(Y))))^2.6),
where x and y denoted the first row and column respectively. FI claims to
have a smart recalculation feature. When just half of the matrix was to be
recalculated Excel still took 9.8 seconds (probably measurement error), but
FI just took 2.6 seconds! Grade: FI 8, Excel 7
21. Max sheet size. A difference here, FI: 256 columns x 2,023 rows (FI uses
virtual memory if needed), Excel: 256 columns x 16,384 rows (if and only if you
have the RAM). I can't picture spreadsheets this large. The edit line will
take 255 text characters in both programs. One application I use a spreadsheet
for at home is tracking expenses to help form a budget. For certain line items
the list can get quite long (groceries for one). The cell for April groceries
may look like 2.08+55.67+22.34+45.04 ... Excel will only take ~127 characters
this way but FI will take ~255 in a cell. Several things that are limited in
FI like named ranges (255), local macros (127), are limited only by memory in
Excel. Both programs take the same about of disk space ~750K. The example,
help, etc, files with FI take up about 4.4M where they take up 2.1M with Excel.
FI suggests 1280K for multifinder, Excel 1024K. When the program is running
the about finder window shows that FI is using about 1000K and about 200K is
available for data (You can always increase the multifinder segment size).
Excel show it is only using about 500K and about 500K is available for data. I
hope I am interpreting those shaded bars correctly. Grade: FI 6, Excel 8
22. Numbers as text. Another difference here and I guess it matters what you
are used to. FI enters text as text and numbers as formulas unless you precede
them with a ", FI swallows this quote, i.e. it is not shown. If you precede
numbers with an equal sign FI just swallows it. Excel is another beast. Text is
interpreted as text, numbers as numbers, number preceded with an equal sign as
a formula. To enter numbers as text precede them with a quote, but the quote
is not swallowed! If you have entered a number as a number you can not edit it
and add formulas to it using the mouse as a pointer to cells. If you enter a
formula without the preceding equal sign it is entered as text. A shortcut to
numbers as text in FI, say for phone numbers, is to select the cells or column
and format them to be shown as formula. Excel has this format also but it
effects the entire worksheet not just selected cells. (For phone numbers in
Excel just don't put an equal sign in front.) Grade: FI 8, Excel 7
23. Paragraphs. FI has a very nice method on adding annotations to a spread
sheet or graph since everything can be on the same page. Select paragraph from
the draw menu, move a handle to resize, and type in text. You can then justify
the text or do many other "word processor" functions to the text. Excel allows
you to have text fill several contiguous cells but there is no formating or
editing capabilities. Grade: FI 8, Excel 5
24. Radian vs degree. Back to my comparison with Dynacalc. Dynacalc in its
preference settings could be set to degree or radian mode (this setting was
saved with the spreadsheet). As far as I can tell, both FI and Excel only know
about radians. This is great for theoretical stuff, but all the equipment I
have in the lab is calibrated in degrees! I therefore endup having another
column; column A is the measurement in degrees and column B is the measurement
in radians. (You can just use one row for this in FI but I don't recommend it,
see Color: numbers and text, custom formating above). Grade: FI 1, Excel 0
25. Reverse operations like fill up and fill left. Say you have a complicated
formula in cell C3 and you want it duplicated in cells C4 through C10. Select
C3 through C10 then select fill down. But how about fill up? Excel has this
command also, press the shift key before choosing the edit menu and fill down
becomes fill up. (And I have used it, believe it or not!). In FI you have to
copy the cell to the clipboard and paste it to the top cell then use fill down.
I also think there was one other "reverse" operation but I can't find it.
Grade: FI 0, Excel 5
26. Row height, max rows on screen at once: not much difference here. On BIG
spreadsheets I like to see as much data as possible, this is good for analysis
and just having to click on a cell instead of having to scroll first. Both
allow you to make the row height short and the font small easily so you can see
about 40 rows at once. Because of the Icon bar in FI you can see a few more
rows in Excel (you can turn off Excel's status bar to see a few more). The
default is 26 rows for FI and 28 for Excel (this is on a 13" monitor). (This
will change with Excel 3.0 because it gets a Icon row too, with the Icon row
and the status bar it will probably be limited to as much or less then FI.)
Both allow you the same max row height of six inches. Excel has a nice feature
when changing the row height by dragging the gridlines, it shows the size in
points in the selection box. Excel also has a change row height command that
lets you change the selected row height to a particular value or to the
standard, FI allows this setting in a column/row info dialog box. FI has a
reduce view mode where the data area is reduced in size so you can see two or
more pages at the same time. It also has a enlarge and zoom command, the
latter to return to normal size if you used reduce more than once. Grade: FI
7, Excel 7
27. Simple object drawing. FI has a small array of simple drawing tools.
Straight lines w/wo arrows, rectangles, rectangles with rounded corners, and
oval. These can be used to distinguish annotations on graphs, tables, and
data. Excel does not have anything like this, but again it is suppose to be
available on 3.0. Grade: FI 7, Excel 0
28. Sorting. Excel allows you to sort any number or rows or columns but you
can only have 3 keys. FI allows any number of keys. At work we have a
database (in a spreadsheet) on whom has attended an annual conference that we
run. Columns are first name, last name, (Dr, Mr, etc), company, phone, fax #,
address, attended 1989,. . , attended 1991. etc. There are 15 columns 500
rows. FI would not sort these. We backed up a little, FI would sort the first
50 no problem, but not the first 75. I made up a dummy 15x500 array of numbers
and text using the random number generator and set everything to values. FI
had no trouble sorting this array. It must be something to do with our
combination of data. I am currently trying to get feedback from the
manufacture on our problem. Excel had no trouble sorting the "real" 15x500
array of data. Grade: FI 7, Excel 5
29. Status Bar. The bottom of the Excel screen has a status line which says
ready when it is and gives a little more verbose line on what it is going to do
if you choose the current highlited command. It also tells you to recalculate
if you need to when auto calculate has been turned off. Grade: FI 0, Excel 8
30. Titles on screen & on printouts, & Split screens . Many times when you
have a BIG spreadsheet and have column headings at the top (or side) it would
be nice to have them there all the time, like when you are edited the data for
row 120. When I first saw Excel's method of doing this I thought it was well
done. Right above the up arrow in the scroll box is a heavy black line. You
can drag this line down any number of rows. This splits the screen. You can
then scroll the lower portion of the spread sheet and the top rows stay put.
This ability is actually more powerful than appears at first. Since you can
split the screen vertically and horizontally you have four different areas of
your spreadsheet displayed at once. Each has its own set of scroll bars, well
not really. There are two vertical scroll bars and two horizontal scroll bars.
Scrolling the lower left scroll bar scrolls BOTH "windows" above it. You can
freeze the upper left "window" but none of the other three. You can freeze the
upper or left "window" if you just have two "windows". FI takes a completely
different tack. You select the rows you want for titles then freeze them. To
view different areas of your spreadsheet at the same time you create different
views. These are real windows on the screen that can be moved around, each has
its own individual scroll bars. You can have a max of 8 views of one
spreadsheet. For print outs of a spreadsheet you must set print titles to get
that top row with heading information on top of each page. Both programs do
this similarly. Grade: FI 8, Excel 6
31. Overall main manual organization. The two manuals are organized
completely different. Excel's is titled "Reference" and is alphabetical with
sections like: Absolute reference, alignment, array, Auditing worksheet models,
Borders and shading, calculation, ... . FI's manual is title "Using Full
Impact" with sections like: Building a Spreadsheet, Editing a Spreadsheet, An
Introduction to Functions, Seeing Your Data in Charts, ... . Each section has
about 20 subsections in the table of contents. Similar things seem to be
grouped together more in FI's manual and it is more based on learning the
program while Excel's is more of a reference. The FI manual spells out several
errors in the error messages, 17 pages worth, ~120 error messages. Excel has 5
pages worth, ~7 error messages. Grade Full Impact 6, Excel 4
32. System 7 compatibility. Excel 3.0 says it is system 7.0 compatible and
it supports system 7.0. I don't know if this means what Apple calls
"friendly". I don't know about 2.2. Reading on the Ashton Tate bulletin board
FI 2.0 works with System 7.0 but there is a problem with quitting.
33. Future: Please send me e-mail if there are things you would like
compared. I don't have Excel 3.0, part of the reason for this review was to
compare Excel vs FI for our local office, they are very strict that you must
have a purchased copy of each piece of software installed on each computer,
even in the same room. We need to buy 4 more copies of something! I wanted to
get the above sent out, but look for a followup comparing linking spreadsheets
and macros. I have not used either of these capabilities much but think they
should be included in this review. This may take sometime. If you have
corrections also please send them to me e-mail and I'll put the consolidation
on the network.
34. Price: Both programs were advertised in Dec 90 MacUser (the last one I
bought, I got my company's library to get it) for $245. MacWarehouse's most
recent cataloge had Excel 3.0 for $309. One hint: I have noticed on several
programs that once a new version hits the street you can pick up the old
version for dirt cheap and, more often than not, that price + the upgrade cost
is less than the new version directly!
35. Company addresses, network & e-mail address, support.
Full Impact Excel
Ashton Tate Microsoft Corporation
20101 Hamilton Avenue One Microsoft Way
P.O. Box 2833 Redmond, WA 98052-6399
Torrance, Ca 90509-2833 (206)454-2030
(213)329-9989
Ashton Tate's BBS can be gotten
directly (213)324-2188 or by
CompuServ. At the "HOST:" prompt
type ATBBS. Call CompuServe at
(800)848-8980 to get a local #.
On-line services are also available
through GEnie
I should mention that there is more third party support for Excel. Their are
more books on using Excel and third party people doing such things as writing
macros, for instance see "101 Macros for Excel".