Numbers as Excel replacement

Question

I have really been trying to like Numbers.
I am a long time Excel user and spreadsheet addict. I am not a power user by any means (I don't even know what a pivot table is much less how to make or use one). I mostly use the spreadsheets for financial tracking and time tracking (logbooks).
On a nice clean Leopard install, I did not want to pollute it with all the duplicate fonts and other garbage MS Office spews on to the hard drive. So I bought iWork.
Almost everything I try to do requires a work-around and from what I read here, I am not the only one experiencing this.
I know and fully understand that Numbers is NOT Excel and I don't want it to be. It just seems that Apple has kind of dropped the ball even in what a simple spreadsheet program should be. It almost seems like they never expected anyone to use times and dates on their spreadsheets.
I know this is the first try at the spreadsheet market, but I must say that for the first time, I am disappointed in Apple.
I cannot recommend Numbers and am considering "polluting" my clean hard drive with Office spewta once again to have access to time and date calculations, freezing panes, etc.
I hope things change on the next rev. and I hope it is a free update.

Answer 1

Take your attendance example, I have the same situation. If you put the dates in the header row they will appear in each page in print view, this is what I do. <</div>
If you are in "print view", does that mean you have to switch to some other view to edit info? Or is it still allow edits but just is a different way of seeing things? Also, you mention header ROW. I haven to have three rows for what I would want to always see. I also have two columns I freeze.
In excel we all put the latest date at the right-hand end of the table. Why not do it this way, put the latest date right after the names (by adding a column there as you take attendance each class), thus your first day of class would be the one that is pushed off the screen and that would not matter <</div>
Okay, so everything ends up in reverse order and I guess that could be done, even though it isn't normal, but what about when I'm looking through a series of dates to see patterns - like maybe the student doesn't do their homework sometimes and looking back I might notice it is always on Wednesdays. I'd still need to scroll but I wouldn't see the student's name as I did. Hiding columns would also make it harder every time I need to look for these things.
Then instead of making all the totals to be at the far right of the column, make a separate table for that. <</div>
That is certainly an option that I think would work fine, though as I switched from one to another, I'd still have to find the student in question on a second sheet instead of having already found them on the first.
I'll need to actually try this on Numbers sometime when I get to the Apple store again.
It does seem to me that being able to freeze panes is a pretty simple, basic capability to have though. I really can't imagine why it wouldn't be something people would want. It would be like saying we only want a one-button mouse so we are different than windows!