Before Microsoft shoved it down the throat of PC users, Excel's only claim to fame was that it was the best spreadsheet for Macintoshes... not exactly a great accomplishment. But when Windows took over the PC market, and Microsoft began pushing the Office suite of programs, Excel suddenly became IT. It's a good spreadsheet, but it's far from the only spreadsheet you might want to use.
	OpenOffice/NeoOffice/StarOffice Calc includes the same range of analysis and graphic tools as other professional spreadsheets. It will run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, or Sun Solaris and stores its documents in XML, the fully-open data storage format. It has excellent compatibility with MS Office files. It's available in two flavours: OpenOffice, the free open-source version, and Sun StarOffice, which includes some additional features and corporate support at a fairly low price.
	Lotus 1-2-3 is the original "killer app" that legitimised PCs for business. While it no longer dominates the spreadsheet market (another victim of Microsoft's advantage in creating and then bundling Windows applications) it's still a very powerful and capable analysis tool. And of course it's a great component to use along with Lotus Notes and the rest of Lotus' suite of applications.
	Quattro Pro began its existence as a clone of Lotus 1-2-3, but quickly went beyond it. ("Quattro" is Italian for "4".) Now Corel offers it as part of the WordPerfect Office package, where it gives you the same kinds of powerful data analysis and graphic tools that Excel does (plus some that Excel doesn't), and improves on its compatibility with Excel files. For Windows.
	PlanMaker is an attempt to duplicate the exact feature set of Excel in a spreadsheet developed for Linux, and for both the desktop and handheld versions of Windows. It is currently in beta testing, but looks pretty good so far.
	AppleWorks is kind of like MS Office on a diet. It's actually one of the last surviving all-in-one productivity packages, combining integrated modules for word processing, spreadsheets, database, presentations, and drawing. Included in the box is a CD containing versions for Windows, OS X, and the old Mac OS, which makes it convenient if you work in a mixed-platform environment. And it's substantially cheaper than the next-best suite available in native Win/Mac versions: MS Office.
	GoBe Productive is a very highly-integrated office software package, by some of the same people who created AppleWorks. Rather than having separate programs or even discrete modules for word processing, spreadsheets, graphics, presentation, etc. GoBe Productive is a single program that lets you do all of these things, even in a single document. It was a popular package for BeOS, and is now available for Windows. A trial version is available for download.
	Ability Spreadsheet is part of a complete suite similar to MS Office, and comes close to qualifying as a clone of Excel, with file-format compatibility, an interface that will look very familiar to Excel users, and of course features. And much cheaper. The components can be purchased separately or as a complete package. Available for Windows, with a Linux version in the works. A free trial can be downloaded.
	Mariner Calc is a less-bloated alternative to Excel on the Mac that still has nearly all of the power and features you're likely to actually want, and you don't have to buy an entire office suite to get it.
	KSpread is the spreadsheet component for the free KOffice suite for Unix-like operating systems running the KDE desktop (also free). As a volunteer project, it doesn't have the full breadth and depth of features as a commercial spreadsheet program, but it has most of the standard capabilities one expects from a modern spreadsheet: complex formulas, multiple sheets, formatting, graphs, scripting, conditional coloring, hyperlinks, etc.
	Gnumeric is part of the GNU Project (to build a completely free Unix-like operating system). Its goal is to offer a fully-capable replacement for commercial spreadsheet programs such as Excel or Lotus 1-2-3, and although it's still a ways from reaching that point, it's already a very useful tool. It runs in the Gnome desktop on Unix-like operating systems. It's a key piece of the loosely-coordinated Gnome Office suite.
	602Tab is part of a free suite from the Czech company Software602 that includes a word processor and photo editor module. It doesn't have all of Excel's features (the word processor is a better match to Microsoft's), but it should be close enough if you're working on your own most of the time and don't need to share files.
	Thinkfree Office may reflect the future of software distribution (for better or worse, it's the model Microsoft is switching to). It's licenced by annual subscription (with free upgrades during the term), and operates in conjunction with the company's web site, where your documents can be stored (securely) for retrieval from anywhere. It requires a relatively small download, which can also be used (with local storage) offline. It's Java based, so it's compatible with all the major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS, and Unix-like systems. Companies can licence a server edition for deployment on their LAN.
	As the name suggests, AS-EASY-AS was created as a cheaper clone of 1-2-3. It has since been upgraded (and won shareware awards), including versions for Windows and a Y2K-compliant version for DOS. (Their spreadsheet Alite, a smaller program for DOS that will run on an original IBM PC, is also Y2K-ready.)
	GS-Calc is a surprisingly powerful, very inexpensive shareware program, highly rated, and compatible with the latest file formats.
	Excel Viewer is a free download from Microsoft that can read and print Excel 97 and most Excel 2000 spreadsheets, taking the burden off your spreadsheet program of choice if people are in the habit of sending you information in those formats. Unfortunately it doesn't let you edit the data or examine the underlying formulae, but it's better than buying Excel just to look at other people's numbers. icExcel is a shareware utility for opening Excel spreadsheets on a Mac.

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