There are spreadsheets and spreadsheets. And there's Multiplan

[extra: multiplan.jpg|My own 150x150-cell business model Multiplan spreadsheet print-out on the wall above my desk at Soman-Wherry Press, Norwich, in 1988.  It was created on the Wang Professional PC next to it.]Multiplan was part of the wave of spreadsheet software that followed on from the release of Visicalc for the Apple II in 1979. 

It had been written in such a way that it could be easily ported, and so appeared on machines as diverse as the Burroughs B-20 and Commodore 64, as well as the Apple II and regular MS-DOS PCs[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan]. 

Proving that Microsoft didn't always have things its own way, Multiplan never managed to best Lotus 1-2-3, which was selling 24,000 units a month compared to MultiPlan's 17,000 in 1983, although Microsoft's total software revenues were higher at $68 million compared to $40 million[source: "Software report", PCW, March 1984, p. 230]. 

Multiplan did however become the top-selling business package in West Germany in 1984, shifting £2.4 million worth, or about [[3|1984]] million in [[now]] terms[source: "German sales top British", Commodore Computing International, November 1984, p. 5].

Lotus 1-2-3 - MultiPlan's arch rival - ended up becoming the definitive "second-generation" spreadsheet which ruled until programs like Borland's Quattro Pro and Microsoft's update, Excel, appeared. 

Excel eventually destroyed all other spreadsheets in its path as part of Microsoft's desktop lock-in strategy.

Microsoft was a surprisingly infrequent advertiser during this era, presumably resting on the fact that its BASIC was on pretty much every home micro ever made and MS-DOS/PC-DOS was the shoe-in standard for most IBM PCs ever shipped.