Speaking of Excel... try this sum in Excel 2007:
=77.1*850
The answer you'll get is 100,000. The correct answer is 65,535 (=2^16-1).
Click here to see Microsoft's response.
They claim that it's a display issue and that any sums derived from the result cell will be correct. This is not so. Taking the result cell and ,multiplying by 2 does indeed return 131,070 (as they state), but multiplying it by 1 still gives 100,000. Adding 1 to the result gives 100,001 whilst deducting 1 gives 65,534.
This is very bad news if your budget or forecast happens to include 65,535 or 65,536.
Elsewhere on the web people are claiiming that similar problems have existed in all versions of Excel although some are repeating the party line that it's confined to Excel 2007. I am not in a position to check.
I do know, however, that this is totally unsatisfactory. If MS spent more time getting the basics right and less time bloating their software with non-features (anyone remember the flight simulator in Excel?) they'd get a bit more respect as a company.
Michael Alec Bryant
19th November 2007
