I never really understood pivot tables. In fact, for this blog entry I had to search for a definition. Wikipedia suggests: “A pivot table is a data summarization tool”.
I have a better understanding now as during the weekend I wanted to do some data analysis. The problem was that the data was not able to be produced in the same report, so I ended up with two reports with some common data. I had two options – manual data entry and calculations, or learning more about PowerPivot, a new data analysis add-on for Excel 2010.
Microsoft has put a number of videos on the PowerPivot website so that you can learn more and hands-on labs to try it out. I suggest you have a look at these. The tool is available to download as part of your Beta evaluation of Office 2010.
I was pleasantly surprised that it worked as advertised. I was able to create relationships between the data, summarise it in a Pivot Table, and find some interesting insights in the data.
I downloaded Office 2010 Beta and thought I would be both cautious and clever by installing the 32 bit edition – but it wasn’t to be. Primarily I chose this option so that I could roll back easily if it was not ready for primetime. All would have been OK, except that the installer required the removal of Outlook 2007, so my plan was foiled. Installation was reasonably fast, and I began by starting up Outlook and it crashed on every second email. I was starting to regret testing beta software on my primary machine.
So I decided to go for broke and install the x64 edition (as I am running Windows 7 x64) and I am really happy with it. The downside of installing the x64 edition was the removal of all previous 32 bit editions of Office, so there is no easy rollback.
With some more use, I was pleasantly surprised. Everything is stable, and the applications work as expected. I immediately noticed how much faster Outlook was to load and be ready to work. I can’t say I have found any new killer features, just incremental improvements, for example, a better scheduling display when searching diaries to make a meeting.
If you want to find out more, have a look at the beta site which includes links to get the public preview.
I was never in any doubt about Citrix XenApp Server’s ability to handle low speed connections, but recently I had an opportunity to prove that it really is the best in the business. I was flying from New York to Los Angeles on Virgin America and used their in-flight internet Wi-Fi. I was able to download my email, and connect in to our Citrix server to run some month end reports – fantastic.
However, all was not good on my travels; I was frustrated with my iPhone in that I had turned off data roaming for most of the time. Even though I used it sparingly, my bill for data roaming was 15x greater than a colleague who had a Blackberry – moral of the story, if you travel, a BlackBerry is your best bet! I allocate 50% of the problem to the actual device and its data usage, and the remainder to the gouging by mobile operators on their data plans.
With the pricing structures that both Vodafone and Telecom have for roaming, they made me think twice about alternative technology for making calls. Skype on my iPhone over Wi-Fi became my friend, and it was a great tool and cost saver.