How is the excel for Mac performance? Could you tell me pro and cons of excel for Mac and Numbers? Which is the best?

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    I am a regular user of MS Excel, and have fairly large spreadsheets with macros etc., and also use it for plotting graphs with lots of data points.

    I find Excel for Mac (Office 2011) to be good in that it has all the features of Excel 2010 (Windows version), and for me has been 100% compatible with files from the windows version. However it is _very much_ slower than the Windows counterpart on the same machine hardware (I have dual boot with Windows 7 and Office 2010 installed on a Mac Mini 2009 (Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 120GB SSD). It is also slightly less stable.

    If you are a casual user of Excel, and need 100% Excel file compatibility it will serve you well. Numbers does not provide 100% file compatibility. However for serious use I recommend installing Windows on your mac and getting the windows version of Office, otherwise you may be particularly frustrated with the slowness of the program.

    I also purchased some better plotting software (Datagraph) from the App Store to plot in split seconds what Excel struggles to display without grinding to a halt. I now use Excel mostly for data manipulation, quick plotting (and then deleting again), but not for producing my final plots.

    I hope that helps.

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