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If you're not technically inclined, and you just want
to log your data, and do what ever analysis your current
power meter software provides, that's fine.
That leaves you with more time to ride your bike, great.
Maybe you just give your power meter data to your coach,
and don't even look at it, even better.
But if you do like playing with technology, and
especially if you are already an Excel user,
you may want to at least look into what you can do
with your power meter data in Excel.
There are several competing power meters on the market now,
with new ones seemingly appearing fairly regularly.
All of these power meter manufacturers
have their own software, and there are great
hardware independent software packages as well.
While most of these packages may do all the typical types
of analysis you desire, the whole cycling power meter
field is still in its infancy, and new types of analysis
are being thought up fairly regularly.
In particular the "Wattage" forum on topica seems to be
the current hot bed of ideas (at least public online ones),
most notably, with Andy Coggan being
the creator of many of them:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/wattage/
Since new types of analysis are regularly being created,
sooner or later the off-the-shelf software package you're
using will probably be found lacking in its abilities.
So if you want to use the latest types of analysis being
created, you'll probably want to learn to analyze your
power meter data with Excel as well.
Most of the new analysis ideas being developed are,
most likely, being developed with Excel in the first place.
I've just started developing
my Excel power meter tools.
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