Which alternatives to Microsoft Excel are there for MacOS X and what are their (dis)advantages? I'm still working with Office:mac:2004 on my MacBook 13" (2,16 GHz, 3 GB RAM, MacOS X 10.6.8) and it is quite slow in Loading the applications, so I avoid working with it if I can.

What are alternatives to MS Excel which have at least the following features:


filtering of tables
creating complex formulae
(if possible also a programming language like VBA to create custom commands and formulae)
cell format change automatically dependent on cell value


(Free applications would be welcome)

Would the most recent version of MS Office perform better on my (quite old) MacBook?
I would recommend you use Numbers from Apple. It is a very powerful tool, yet very easy to get started with.

You find more information about it on the Apple product page: http://www.apple.com/iwork/numbers/

Here are some hints for your requested features:


Filtering of tables http://www.apple.com/iwork/tutorials/#numbers-cell
Creating complex formulae http://www.apple.com/iwork/tutorials/#numbers-formula
Formatting cells http://www.apple.com/iwork/tutorials/#numbers-format


If you are interested in scripting Numbers, I highly recommend you to check out the AppleScript language guide.
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/applescript/conceptual/applescriptlangguide/AppleScriptLanguageGuide.pdf

Numbers, as many other popular OSX applications, is fully scriptable using AppleScript.

My own experience with Numbers is great. I stopped using Excel a long time ago. I use it as my main spreadsheet application, and I found the learning curve is quite shallow. Although if you plan to become an expert user, it may take a while to adapt to the different environment. But as long as you go the "Apple way" by learning and using the built in tools, you will soon find yourself in a very comfortable spot.
A good example is the Address Book. Since I have started using the Address Book, mass mailing became very easy.