When it came to naming the Greatest Software Ever Written, 11 out of my 12 candidates stood up fairly well to critical review. The one that didn't was Microsoft's Excel. There may well be double the number of dubious candidates on my present list, the Greatest Software on the Web.

But first, let's address how Excel made it onto the original list.

Excel was my No. 9 choice on the Aug. 14, 2006, list of 12 candidates. When it came to the PC spreadsheet, most people read my argument for Excel and voted for Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc. Furthermore, I never explained why I chose Excel over VisiCalc or Mitch Kapor's 1-2-3. The story just makes a simple pro-Excel statement.

Carl Berman at carl@slvrsft.com told me that "VisiCalc stands out because it brought computing out of the province of white coats and into the hands of the average person."

He recounted how in 1982 his Wang-bound office was debating the merits of desktop PCs. He asked the controller if he had a simple tool to calculate the day's cash flow in seconds, would he pay the modest price of the software and computer to run it? Carl got his PC by introducing VisiCalc. "This was great software. It met a real need."

He's right. And another:

"I was puzzled about saying Excel was one of your [top 12] programs. VisiCalc preceded it and was the conceptual breakthrough that lead to the rest, and 1-2-3 was the most famous of the graphic integration sheets," wrote Glenn C. Everhart at everhart@gce.com.

He continued, "In my humble opinion, VisiCalc was the conceptual ancestor of all of them and … deserved the nod."

The pro-VisiCalc opinion wasn't quite unanimous. There were those who thought Lotus 1-2-3 was the true first embodiment of the spreadsheet. I liked the first part of this criticism: "It may be hard for a younger person to get this; anyone not in that 1980s wave of terminal replacement with PC's running Lotus 1-2-3 would see Lotus as Lotus as 'crude' and Excel as the real break-through product," wrote C. Wardlaw at wardlawc@yahoo.com.

Actually, I remember those 1980 days, all the way back to Wang word processors of the pre-IBM PC era. Wardlaw continued: "Contrary to your article, it was Lotus 1-2-3 not Excel that was the breakthrough spreadsheet. Excel didn't establish its dominance of the spreadsheet until 1992, well after Lotus dominated MS DOS-based computing environments for a decade (1983-1992)." All true.

And finally, this criticism for having been too brief on the one favorable reference to Microsoft: "I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft, but I'm not sure you gave them a fair shake—even your mention of Excel was incredibly minimal," wrote Jason Emery of Seattle.

All of these comments spring from the Aug. 14-16 time frame as the Greatest Software Ever Written produced a flood of comments to InformationWeek.

Here's how I gravitated to Excel after careful consideration of both VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3.

That's because VisiCalc as a breakthrough was a breakthrough in packaging the spreadsheet for a diminuative platform. It had previously existed as a component of mainframe and midrange hardware accounting packages. The first spreadsheet that I used was software that ran on the Digital Equipment Vax; its name has rightfully disappeared into the dustbin of history, but it appeared years before 1-2-3.

Bricklin's contribution was to pry the spreadsheet lose from its accounting brethren and package it as a standalone application for the PC. It was a great repackaging idea but not great software. Lotus 1-2-3 perfected the spreadsheet as a PC concept but only for MS DOS. It missed the Windows graphical user interface. I couldn't forgive the dominant spreadsheet vendor falling hopelessly behind on the user interface. What's the point of great PC software if the user interface isn't right?

Several writers suggested that Microsoft made it difficult for Lotus to take advantage of the new Windows interface. I agree, Microsoft is likely to have made it as difficult as possible. But if you are already the dominant spreadsheet vendor, you have the resources and the wherewithal and you do it anyway.

Then I looked at what Excel did for spreadsheets in the form of early drag and drop, high-end calculation with pivot points, and other features that made the spreadsheet a superlative desktop tool. Others can make the case for VisiCalc and 1-2-3. I'm sticking with Excel.

Now about this year's list of Greatest Web Software. Surely you see a candidate that you consider suspect, wobbly, and weak in the knees or just plain hopelessly out of place. Go ahead. Tell me about it. I'm all ears.