The Single Table Model in PowerPivot

In my last post I examined a normalised vs a denormalised model in PowerPivot. In some cases, though, users will invariably avoid this de/normalisation "stuff" and import a single table in PowerPivot. After all, PowerPivot targets Excel users, and Excel users are used to using large workbooks - in most cases a large extract provided by their friendly DBA or database developers. This is why the scenario where PowerPivot becomes a tool to overcome the 1 million rows limitation in Excel will be quite common. But how does it perform, is it wise to do this and when? I will try to answer some of the questions in this post.