You are confusing your familiarity of M$ with features of OO. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The OO ui DOES NOT MIMIC M$. so you really need to read the OO manuals and tuts.
Put in a pivot and watch the application slow down like hell. Even if we put in a few vlookups it will slow down. The autofilter option in OO is a joke!
I will not complain, hey i get it for free ... and in all probability much more secure. But thing is i dont mind paying a reasonable amount if somebody would put in these things for me.
Gnome spreadsheet is no better. While it opens up files much faster and in general has a better user interface its extremely slow to save files.
???. Samba /CIFS works better than M$ network share. However you
really dont need samba if u are using linux. NFS works very well. For a corner case like yours, you really need to hire someone for a year.
Well it was cumbersome to transfer files from one computer to another and then transfer it to the virtual machine. no problems with network sharing. Besides the virtual machine hung too much due to a display bug, it has since been rectified in a later version i think.
You are confusing your familiarity of M$ with features of OO
no problem with not having features. Try a pivot and watch the sheet slow down in OO. If you would like to try something else, try an index match equivalent or simpler vlookup.
Gnumeric is faster and responsive but is extremely slow to save. And OO and gnumeric gets real slow after some usage. you can get your work done, but after sometime you get the feeling whether the learning curve is worth the effort.
Try a simple auto filter and and u will know what i mean by clunky. Add to this the constant irritation of spreadsheets looking different or not the way you wanted to when you save it in MS excel format. This is magnified when you send the sheet across to your customers. SG