Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!lll-winken!decwrl!jumbo!mcjones
From: mcjones@jumbo.dec.com (Paul McJones)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Why is Excel 2.2 is a magnitude (or two) slower than Excel 1.5
Summary: Excel 2.2 is slow on 68000-based Macintoshes
Message-ID: <14211@jumbo.dec.com>
Date: 15 Nov 89 00:57:28 GMT
References: <7940@ditmela.oz> <4016@ur-cc.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcjones@srcf0a.UUCP (Paul McJones)
Organization: DEC Systems Research Center, Palo Alto
Lines: 47

In <7940@ditmela.oz>, Hans Eriksson (hans@ditmela.oz.au) says he's 
found that Excel 2.2 runs much more slowly than Excel 1.5 on his 
Mac Plus with 2.5MB RAM and an HD20SC.  He conjectures:

    Maybe 2.2 is not good at handling a lot of =DSUM(), maybe it's 
    something else.

In <4016@ur-cc.UUCP>, Eric Carleen (mpip@uhura.cc.rochester.edu) 
replies that his spreadsheets, which all involve datbase commands, 
take about twice as long with version 2.2 as with version 1.5.  He 
too has a Mac Plus with 2.5MB of RAM.

Back in July I observed similar slowdowns with Excel 2.2 on a Mac 
Plus.  I sent queries both to comp.sys.mac and to the internet Info-Mac 
Digest.  I only got back a few responses, but they all fit into this 
pattern:

    1.  Excel 2.2 running on a Mac Plus or SE (both of which have 
    a 68000 processor) performs many operations (including starting 
    the application, opening, saving, and print-previewing a document) 
    about two or three times more slowly than Excel 1.5.

    2.  Excel 2.2 has substantially less space available for open 
    documents on a 1MB machine, and thrashes much more noticeably 
    when memory is low.  (I've since upgraded to 2.5MB, so at least 
    *that* isn't a problem.)

Personally, I'm quite mad at Microsoft for not warning Macintosh 
Plus users of these performance problems before encouraging us to 
fork over $100 for the upgrade.  In fact, I think if they can't tune 
version 2.2, they should keep version 1.5 on the market for those 
of us with "entry level" machines.  I've complained about this to 
a friend of mine who is highly placed in Microsoft development; he 
promised to look into it but never replied.  Perhaps if all of us 
who are affected would write letters and send copies to Microsoft 
customer service, to Microsoft's One-to-One newsletter, to MacWEEK, 
MacWorld, etc., we could get Microsoft's attention.

Has anyone compared the performance of versions 1.5 and 2.2 on a 
Macintosh Portable, which also uses the 68000 processor (but at a 
higher clock rate)?


Paul McJones
mcjones@src.dec.com
decwrl!mcjones
(415) 853-2255