<p>I like 2013 much better than 2007, so far (never used 2010), but I haven’t done anything heavy duty in excel yet. Honestly, I don’t remember the pre-2007 styling much anymore, so I’d have to use it again to refresh my memory. I do also like the windows version better than the Mac version. There’s some stuff that you just can’t seem to do in the Mac version, which is annoying.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’d never recommend excel as someone’s primary graphing software. I use it mostly for quick and easy preliminary analysis and graphing something in excel is mostly just a quick way to get a visualization of the data. But if I needed something publishable or even something for a serious presentation, I always use other software. There’s just not a lot of control in excel.</p>
<p>Agreed about using other stuff than Excel for serious graphing. I’ll usually do all my playing in there to figure out exactly what I want (best way to try and visualize it), then just import the bit of data I need to reproduce my figure into something else that’ll give me an easier time doing what I want. I’ve mostly found it nice to be for when I want to quickly make up a few plots off of some newish data, and then want to send it along to people that are interested. Unlabeled plots are a big issue, so the sub/super/greek thing gets frustrating when it can, otherwise, do a passable job.</p>
<p>I’ll agree with 2013 being an improvement over previous ribbon versions. I just used it yesterday on a new computer we have in the lab, and I like it a bit better than my office computer’s version.</p>
<p>My S’s laptop has Win8. He just defaults to desktop, and from there it’s pretty identical to Win7. Don’t see what the problem is–AFAIK, he’s never been thrown off his browser.</p>
<p>Too cheap for Macs here; can’t see paying 4 figures or close to it for the Apple specialness. Never had any problems with Windows (I’ll make an exception for Vista, which does seem to have been buggy, but Win 7 has run seamlessly for me on my 400 dollar laptop.)</p>
<p>Macs are more expensive up front but gave resale value at upgrade time. I bought my Mac Mini in 2008 for $950. Sold it last Fall for $450. Try that with a PC - they are worth zero after 4 years. You have to look at the total cost of ownership.</p>
<p>Just installed Lubuntu 12.04 LTS and libreoffice on a friend’s 2004 laptop. Runs so much better than WinXP that he asked me why he didn’t think of installing it earlier. :)</p>
<p>And he’s not technically inclined in the least. </p>
<p>Recognized everything including internal wifi card.</p>