Reviews

TinySheet

October 4, 2001

I have to warn you though that I am NOT a number-cruncher, banker, accountant, engineer, or consultant. My typical uses for a spreadsheet include data organization and very simple budgeting at the most, so this review will not cover any of the more advanced TinySheet functions. Instead, I’ll focus on the basic features of the product, as well as its speed and ease of use.

In those regards, TinySheet is a winner. The installation process is the same as the one I described yesterday for FastWriter, and the conduit manager is exactly the same, except that an additional area is included now to allow you to select the spreadsheets that you would like to add to your handheld device. That conduit is flawless too, in the sense that I haven’t been able to crash it in any of my tests, or confuse it in any way— changes I make in Excel on the desktop show up in TinySheet on my handheld, and vice versa. No lost formatting, no lost data at all. And that is of course of paramount importance in this type of computing model, where the data is more important than the device used to access it.

Another of my “pet peeves” as it were is clean design and good user interfaces. In other words, the mark of an excellent program is whether I have to read the manual in order to figure out how to use it, or if I can just jump in and get to work without any training. TinySheet passes that test with flying colors, as you can see from the screenshot, the screen layout is very simple and easy to understand, and all of the icons make sense. The first gives you access to the file’s details, and the next allows you to delete the file if you no longer want it on your handheld device. Proceeding to the right you have the Sum function, and then a function icon that gives you access to some of the more advanced functions you’lls find in TinySheet. Cut, copy and paste are at hand, as well as two icons on the right that allow you to add color backgrounds and colored text to each cell in the spreadsheet.

The formatting options are quite extensive. When you use the shortcut command to access the cell format menu, you are presented with a variety of options, including number, alignment, font, border, protection, and color. And the layout of those options is very similar to what you would expect to find in Microsoft Excel on the desktop. You won’t find quite as many on the Palm device, but what you get with TinySheet is certainly sufficient.

 

What really sets TinySheet apart though is the new TinyChart application— until now, charting was pretty much the exclusive realm of QuickSheet and QuickChart from Cutting Edge Software. And while I must admit that I don’t have a whole lot of use for charting on my handheld device, I wish that I did- TinyChart is truly a joy to work with and provides more options than I thought possible. Just check out some of the screenshots below to see what I mean. Charting may not seem to be very important on a handheld device, but it is. It helps you to conceptualize your data in a much more effective way, and it also allows the “big picture” to be quickly shared with others without trying to scroll through several small screenfuls of data.

 

I didn’t run any terribly extensive calculation tests on TinySheet, but I found it to perform very quickly in all respects save one. When you first launch the program each time on your Palm OS device, there is a noticeable delay in the program start, though opening individual spreadsheets occurs almost instantaneously. Recalculating formulas with new data was also very speedy, as was creating charts. If TinySheet sounds like something that could make time spent with your Palm OS handheld device more productive, then I strongly encourage you to head on over to the iambic site and get a free trial of TinySheet and TinyChart. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving it a try. If I’ve already convinced you, the program is available for $29.95, or for $39.95 as a part of the iambic Office suite, which also includes FastWriter and iambic Mail.

PocketGoddess Rating for TinySheet:

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