Google Documents too slow

[Faan]

I started using Google documents a few weeks ago. Among others I use a spreadsheet on a daily basis. This particular spreadsheet contains quite a number of formulas and entails about 4 pages.

My experience is that it is very slow and I sometimes have to wait up to a minute for the document to do what it is suppose to be doing. It has also happened on a few occasions that I want to insert more columns in the document just to get a message that it is not possible and that I have to export the document and then import it again to get the required result. This to me is too time consuming.

I am therefore not so sure that is a good idea to use Google documents and specifically the spreadsheet facility.

I would appreciate it if I could get some feedback from other people using Google documents.

Thanks

[BusFact]

I don't use Google Docs purely because of occasional connection problems. I would think that Google docs should be able to recalculate your spreadsheet with reasonable speed on their side. My guess is the delay is being caused by the speed of your international bandwidth.

With the Seacom cable down, you may have found this has got much worse over the last two or so weeks.

Perhaps 1) Wait until Seacom is repaired and see if performance is improved, 2) Test using a similar but far less complex spreadsheet and see if that speeds things up much.

I still prefer to use Openoffice on my own computer. No irritating delays with each entry made.

[Faan]

It could be because of the cable problem.

I have also been using Openoffice for the past year or two, but decided to try google documents. I must however say that I have reverted back to Openoffice.

I just think it is convenient to use Google and use their storage. Will wait for a while and see whether there is an improvement.

[derekjay]

I use Google Docs on a daily basis and must agree that it is quite slow in general. I've tried switching between 3G, Wifi and ADSL and none of them produce particularly speedy results.

That said, waiting up to a minute for a sheet to load sounds a bit heavy to me. I usually have at max a 10 second delay, but I don't use any formulas, so that might be the reason...

[irneb]

I'd also advise using OOo, there's even an extension which will open the google doc directly from your google account and save it back. Without even opening your browser. This way you get the best of both, online storage and a much more powerful & fast spreadsheet program. Not to mention, you could even save to your HDD so you can work offline, for those times there's simply no connection whatsoever.

The only problem I can see is if you're using a NetBook with extremely small HDD & RAM as well as slow CPU. In that case you're probably better off staying with Google's online program.

[derekjay]

@irneb - Thanks for mentioning the OOO plugin - that makes life much easier!