TinySheet Resurrected

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Denis L

New member
Just got an email from Iambic telling me TinySheet 5.0 is out.

Most of you on here know of my frustration with Iambic's insane upgrade policy and my subsequent dropping altogether of Agendus. Well, I've been a Tiny Sheet user for nearly 5 years, and was disappointed when 4.25 was going to be the "last;" it was discontinued.

Apparently it has been picked up again, and surprisingly the new version is only the same 294k. They haven't butchered it into a 1.5MB wasteful behemoth (yet). A lot has been fixed apparently.

I dropped Documents to Go 6 months ago and went BACK to the old TinySheet, which still works at least on my T3 including the conduit; this 5.0 looks exciting and now offers landscape and fixes for key problems - the paintbrush cell "picker," crashes on certain .csv sheets, and most importantly for me the "date" formatting, which gets a little hairy between synchs if you choose "07/12" instead of "07/12/2006." It reverts back to a weird custom date formatting instead of Excel's. Hopefully the new one won't (it's mentioned on the list of fixes) - so guess it's off with the $9.95 upgrade fee for me at least.

For any of you using spreadsheets and having D2G problems (I see many on here) - TinySheet is fast, does not statically change the size of spreadsheets on the handheld during edits before hotsync, and at 300k is a terrific spreadsheet program. Have to give credit where it's due. I'm going for 5.0, contacting Iambic today, and thought I'd pass along to all of you who may use spreadsheets.

Unfortunately, according to this:
http://support.iambic.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14791
There is one "bug" from 4.25 they haven't gotten to yet, (no fix/repair, removed) and as you notice no one from Iambic is answering the question after May of 2005! . . . must be too busy cashing all those $9.95s. 2 messages are from people who JUST upgraded. I also got "undeliverable" to an email I sent to James - so perhaps it's a whole new crew over there.

It's still worth checking out, and I'm going to send the $$. I figure if it is NOT worth it, it will simply confirm my "upgrade fears" about Iambic. I have a feeling, though, it's worth it for the improvements - and at least I'm not toiling with Docs2Go.
 
Well, mailed off the $9.95 and 3 days later have the unlock code. Some points, most of them good!

For the tekkies:
1. I downloaded both the new .prc and the installer, but only put the new prc on the T3 - the old desktop portion apparently has not been changed, and the old one synched just fine. I didn't want to bother uninstalling/reinstalling the conduit if I didn't have to, and didn't!

2. The new app size INSTALLER is same as 4.25 - 294k - however the "installer" (agendus like) leaves behind a larger 414k app - only 110k bigger, and works great in flash. Yippee.

3. Very impressive: I took a look through TealMover at the default stack ("stack/dynamic") of this goodie and it is not the default 3300 - which I was already to boost to 5632 for stability - it's 8192 right outta the box!!

Good and Bad:

Bad:
1. "Repair sheet" is still no re-implemented - that's ok, as I've only had to "repair" a sheet once, and did that in Excel and renamed/resynched. You're probably better off doing it that way anyway.
2. Categories were shifting to the right at first, now stabilized (that's ok, MobileDB4 does same thing). They're fine now, after 2 hotsynchs. Good.

Good:
1. Landscape! Yeah, baby. Now even without high-rez, I can hold horizontally in large font and still see 4-5 columns. Sticking with Hi-rez, tho.
2. Newer "look," more like "modern" spreadsheet apps, not as chalky, much better on high-rez.
3. Most important: Date format is fixed. If you had a column of dates like "7/28" instead of 7/28/06," entering a new "data entry" would revert back to the old "7/28/06" format; you constantly had to re-edit, only to have it happen again next time. That's gone now - "7/28" stays as default. Cool!

All in all, it was well worth the $9.95 to upgrade, especially since it was dropped for 3 years by Iambic. If I'm charged another $9.95 in 2 months, I'd probably pay this again, unlike w/Agendus.

Is it worth the initial purchase price to a new user? I would say definitely yes. As I mentioned above the spread sheets are kept at a stable, constant size on the handheld and don't "bloat" pre-synching. A 12k sheet stays at 12k regardless of edits, unlike D2Go which can zoom it up to 20k+ until hotsynching. Because of not having all that "temp memory of changes," I feel the sheets are more secure while editing for long periods away from a PC and less likely to crash or groan either on handheld ur during synch.

Attached are screenshots of the new "look;" definitely cleaner and the hi-rez, although available in 4.25, is better - plus you've got thelandscape.
 
Well this looks good. Thanks for posting. Everytime something goes wrong with my unti, it is usually docs to go. Of course on the downside at Iambic I upgraded my Easy notes, and the new program did not have full icon use like the old one. I have asked Iambic several times about that issue, and well you can hear the crickets. I am thinking of pulling out the old computer I have with the old easy notes on it and fire it up, and put the old program back. I know Iambic has benn busy, but it has been one year and three months since the new easynotes came out.. I am going start calling them PDA preformance, remember Life@Hand yea right. With tinysheets looks like something is going on at Iambic. Thanks again PTL, Russ
 
Exactly what I did w/Tiny sheet - thank God for multiple archive CDs weekly, huh?! Then, these 4-5 months later, I got the email regarding the upgraded TinySheet 5 - and after a week+ of using it now, it IS worth the $$.

New little snags, just FYI:

1. No default > landscape view; you have to manually engage that.
2. Choice of "micro font" or kid's coloring book size "huge old" font, but you can control font centering and weight within the cell, and making it "large bold" is pretty readable.
3. The "use direction buittons to navigate between sheets" is virtually useless; instead use the stylus on the arrows. It's cell by cell scrolling unless held down, unlike D2G which is "page scroll."

If these 3 things were fixed and "repair sheet" re-added - it would be perfect. However- I think it's head & shoulders better than Sheet2Go and would never go back to D2G. I've recommended before on here "TextSync" combined with TealDoc for docs - WFM but no word formatting. Many, many folks need that Word/rtf ability, so D2G still has somewhat of a "lock" on written documents (or else go to WordSmith). Not needing that, TinySheet is the best spreadsheet app, and with its small "faults of old," always was. I just got swept up in D2G and forgot about how "cool" TinySheet was for spreadhseets.
 
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