I see nothing wrong with using excel, it all depends what you are trying to do. I have higher level packages, but still use excel sometimes, for example, am currently experimenting neural networks and rather than invest straight away in a high level program, have initially bought a simple excel add-in. This allows me to start some simple testing and get familiar with the idea.
Alot of strategies can be configured into excel, in addition, there are add-ins for configuration of montecarlo testing etc (although I haven't tried them as I have other packages do this).
CR