Hi, i've read several articles comparing Excel 2003 to 2007, microsoft say
2007 is faster because it uses multi cpu cores etc, but what have people on
this site found in there day to day use of them both? Im using 2003 and i
don't wish to upgrade if its a snail.

Thanks, Shane.

sonicscooter wrote:
Hi, i've read several articles comparing Excel 2003 to 2007, microsoft say
2007 is faster because it uses multi cpu cores etc, but what have people on
this site found in there day to day use of them both? Im using 2003 and i
don't wish to upgrade if its a snail.

Almost everything in XL2007 SP1 runs slower even with multicore CPUs.
The charting and graphics run at glacial speed and by default XY line
graphs look like they were drawn by a 3 year old with a thick wax
crayon. Customise them to sensible settings and they are even slower.
The chart polynomial line fit has been degraded to give the same wrong
answer as LINEST (it was previously surprisingly accurate).

XL2003 is still the fastest and most stable version of Excel. I would
not recommend upgrading unless you really *need* some feature of XL2007.
Maybe with SP2 (290MB download) applied it will be better. There are
supposed to be speed improvements to the charting engine but I am not
holding my breath.

On the plus side in XL2007 you can have larger numbers of rows and
columns but you will wait much longer for it to finish.

If you rely on macro capture then XL2007 SP1 is pretty dire. It hardly
ever generates a captured macro that will work.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Hi, thanks for your reply, i can't understand why microsoft seem to forget
one of the main issues when so many of us use Excel for work, we don't just
want features within Excel.......but SPEED,....time costs us money.

Shane.

"Martin Brown" wrote:

sonicscooter wrote:
Hi, i've read several articles comparing Excel 2003 to 2007, microsoft say
2007 is faster because it uses multi cpu cores etc, but what have people on
this site found in there day to day use of them both? Im using 2003 and i
don't wish to upgrade if its a snail.

Almost everything in XL2007 SP1 runs slower even with multicore CPUs.
The charting and graphics run at glacial speed and by default XY line
graphs look like they were drawn by a 3 year old with a thick wax
crayon. Customise them to sensible settings and they are even slower.
The chart polynomial line fit has been degraded to give the same wrong
answer as LINEST (it was previously surprisingly accurate).

XL2003 is still the fastest and most stable version of Excel. I would
not recommend upgrading unless you really *need* some feature of XL2007.
Maybe with SP2 (290MB download) applied it will be better. There are
supposed to be speed improvements to the charting engine but I am not
holding my breath.

On the plus side in XL2007 you can have larger numbers of rows and
columns but you will wait much longer for it to finish.

If you rely on macro capture then XL2007 SP1 is pretty dire. It hardly
ever generates a captured macro that will work.

Regards,
Martin Brown

On May 15, 11:05*pm, Martin Brown
wrote:
If you rely on macro capture then XL2007 SP1 is pretty dire. It hardly
ever generates a captured macro that will work.

Hi Martin,

What is macro capture/ a captured macro?

Ken Johnson

I was in the process of modifying a large MI reporting application
(lots of charts) created in Excel 2003 to be dual compatible with
2007. Once I got round the removed 'FileSearch' problem I thought I'd
be home and dry but nooooo.

In 2007 the app runs at about a third of the 2003 speed and if I give
it the full complement of data and ask it to create all the reports in
one go it falls over half way through complaining about lack of
resources.

I had thought this may be due to running in 'compatibility mode' but
saving the app and source files as appropriate 2007 versions made no
noticeable difference in performance or reliability.

Also, the charts don't quite look right. Border lines are thicker and
there seems to be less contrast between colours. Some charts fail to
redraw completely.

I should qualify this by saying that my 2Gb lenovo T60 only rates 3.1
on the Vista Windows scoring system. A higher score may improve
matters.

For now though, we've shelved our attempts at dual compatibility and
told users they'll have to stick with 2003 to run this app.

The Calculation engine in 2007 can be faster than 2003 (depends on the
details of the workbook etc), but Charting and VBA are substantially slower
than 2003.

XL 2007 SP2 improves the speed of Charting but its still slower than XL
2003.
Much of the VBA slowdown in 2007 is bypassable with careful VBA coding.

See http://www.decisionmodels.com/VersionCompare.htm for a more detailed
timing comparison.

Hi, i've read several articles comparing Excel 2003 to 2007, microsoft say
2007 is faster because it uses multi cpu cores etc, but what have people
on
this site found in there day to day use of them both? Im using 2003 and i
don't wish to upgrade if its a snail.

Thanks, Shane.


Charles
___________________________________
The Excel Calculation Site
http://www.decisionmodels.com

He means a recorded macro.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Peltier Technical Services, Inc.
http://PeltierTech.com/WordPress/

Advanced Excel Conference - June 17-18 2009 - Charting and Programming
http://peltiertech.com/Training/2009...00906ACNJ.html
_______


"Ken Johnson" wrote in message
...
On May 15, 11:05 pm, Martin Brown
wrote:
If you rely on macro capture then XL2007 SP1 is pretty dire. It hardly
ever generates a captured macro that will work.

Hi Martin,

What is macro capture/ a captured macro?

Ken Johnson

On May 16, 1:32*am, "Jon Peltier"
wrote:
He means a recorded macro.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Peltier Technical Services, Inc.http://PeltierTech.com/WordPress/

Advanced Excel Conference - June 17-18 2009 - Charting and Programminghttp://peltiertech.com/Training/2009-06-ACNJ/AdvExcelConf200906ACNJ.html
_______

"Ken Johnson" wrote in message

...
On May 15, 11:05 pm, Martin Brown
wrote:

If you rely on macro capture then XL2007 SP1 is pretty dire. It hardly
ever generates a captured macro that will work.

Hi Martin,

What is macro capture/ a captured macro?

Ken Johnson

Thanks Jon, I thought it may have been something really wizz-bang:-)

Ken Johnson

Hi, thanks for the replies so far, it seems like alot of hassle to thousands
of people and companies just to carry on doing what we were, quite happily,
on 2003, well thats the "upgrade" hung out to dry then.

Cheers Shane.

"Charles Williams" wrote:

The Calculation engine in 2007 can be faster than 2003 (depends on the
details of the workbook etc), but Charting and VBA are substantially slower
than 2003.

XL 2007 SP2 improves the speed of Charting but its still slower than XL
2003.
Much of the VBA slowdown in 2007 is bypassable with careful VBA coding.

See http://www.decisionmodels.com/VersionCompare.htm for a more detailed
timing comparison.

Hi, i've read several articles comparing Excel 2003 to 2007, microsoft say
2007 is faster because it uses multi cpu cores etc, but what have people
on
this site found in there day to day use of them both? Im using 2003 and i
don't wish to upgrade if its a snail.

Thanks, Shane.


Charles
___________________________________
The Excel Calculation Site
http://www.decisionmodels.com