financial reflections

I posted previously about Google Spreadsheets, which look like Google’s first strike at Microsoft’s Office empire.  The spreadsheets seem to be designed for the everyday user as a low-cost alternative to the expensive MS Office suite.  Well, I’m all about saving money, so I decided to give it a spin.

I loaded my checkbook register into Google Spreadsheets and started doing updates.  Here’s what I found:

Pluses:

• Universal access - I’ve already posted about how I try very hard to keep up to date on my finances.  Getting to my data from virtually anywhere is great.
• Fairly easy to convert Excel files to Google Spreadsheets - I just opened my files right from the Google Spreadsheets page and my data appeared without a hitch.
• Supports all basic functions - Formulas, basic formats and fonts are all there.  It’s all I need for what I do.  But if you’re someone who gets fancy with spreadsheets, it might not work for you.
• Auto Save - Some don’t consider this a plus, but I do.  My work (such as a checkbook register or budget) doesn’t require me to save big chunks at once.  It’s good to know that my data is there automatically.
• It’s Free - Free.  I love that word.  There aren’t even ads right now.  I’m not sure if that will change, but I’m enjoying the ride right now.

Minuses:

• It doesn’t automatically add rows - This was a big frustration.  I have an ongoing check register, so I need to have rows appear automatically.  That didn’t happen.  I was forced to add one row at a time.  I hope that’s updated soon.
• It doesn’t keep the formatting from previous rows with the new row - When I added new rows, they didn’t have the same formatting the cells above them had.  It’s a time-consuming annoyance.
• No “zoom” feature - I had to adjust the rows on my spreadsheet to get a row to fit in my window.  Now that it’s done, I’m all set.
• No auto-adjust of rows - I love the Excel feature that lets me double click to adjust a column’s width.  No such luck on Google Spreadsheets.
• It’s sluggish - granted, this is a beta, but if you’re used to Excel zipping along on you Pentium 4, you are in for and adjustment.  I would enter a date and wait a second for the file to format it into the date format.  Cells didn’t adjust smoothly.  But for free, it’s ok. 
• Limited help - I had a hard time finding what I needed.  Maybe I’m not looking in the right spots?  Hopefully the online help will grow with the service.
• Your data is stored on Google’s servers - I’m storing my budget and checkbook data on those servers.  The catch is that I don’t have account numbers up there.  Of course, the data is associated with my Google mail address, so someone could theoretically get a tie me to that data.  Proceed at your own risk.

Anybody else out there use Google Spreadsheets?  For right now, I’m sticking with it.  If you have experiences, I’d love to hear about them.