Spreadsheet comparison

I tried three different spreadsheets today, performing the same task in each and comparing the results.

The spreadsheets were OpenOffice.org, Google Docs, and Zoho. (Each of these office suites has a spreadsheet component.) I did not include Microsoft Excel, as I know that it can perform this task. (Also because I don't have a copy of Microsoft Office.)

The task was to paste some data and create a chart. I used the same data for each spreadsheet. The data showed browser popularity over the past fifteen months. It had statistics for IE8, IE7, IE6, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera.

I used Google Docs first. I found the experience reasonable. Google Docs has a very good user interface, mimicking the typical (2007) spreadsheet program. (No "ribbon" UI.) I pasted the data and Google Docs did the right thing and parsed my values properly. I deleted some blank rows (they were in the source data), inserted a column and gave it formulas to calculate total IE popularity, sorted the data (the source data was in reverse order), and created a chart. Google Docs walked me through a short wizard to define the data for the chart, define some properties such as title and legend position, and then gave me a chart. The chart was readable and pleasant to look at.

My experience with Zoho was similar. It does not mimic the windows application as much as Google Docs; it takes some time to adjust to Zoho's UI. (But not much.) Zoho also parsed my data properly and provided a wizard to create the chart. (I also sorted the data and created formulas for total IE popularity.) Zoho's performance was slightly better than Google Docs, although Google Docs has the edge on UI. The chart in Zoho was not quite as nice as the one in Google Docs, but still quite usable. Zoho correctly omitted datapoints for empty cells; Google Docs drew the lines with values of zero.

The OpenOffice.org spreadsheet had the best performance. (It was a local application, not a web app.) It provided more granular control over the pasting of data, allowing me to select delimiters. I performed the same operations, removing blank rows, adding columns and formulas, and sorting the data. OpenOffice.org was the only application that could sort a subset of data; Google Docs and Zoho sorted everything with no option to exclude rows or columns. (Perhaps they can with judicious use of the selected cells.) OpenOffice.org also used a wizard to create the chart. It's configuration of chart data is more granular than Google Docs and Zoho; OpenOffice.org lets me select the range for each series where the others use a single block of cells. Oddly, OpenOffice.org's chart was the worst in appearance, with thick, fuzzy lines where the other packages used thin, crisp lines.

Based on this brief evaluation, I see no clear leader. All three did the job. The web-based packages offer sharing of documents; OpenOffice.org uses the "my files on my computer" model. But OpenOffice.org has the better performance and the finer control. I think any could be used successfully for basic spreadsheet needs.