7/26/2009We have been using Windows 7 for a while now, first in beta and more recently the "Release Candidate". It will be publicly available on October 22nd. In the meantime we can confirm that Calc will run on Windows 7.
We think you’ll enjoy Windows 7. It has impressive system performance and resource management. It has the feeling of quality and efficiency that Windows Vista never quite managed. And my personal favorite is the very quick start-up and shut-down times which makes it much easier to justify switching on the computer or getting out the laptop for those quick jobs. And the new security features mean that portable computing is less of a worry - losing a laptop will be merely an expensive mistake, rather than the end of an era.
When you upgrade to Windows 7, or buy a new computer, Calc will be ready to go with you. The Calculator Blog is a handy notice board cum graffiti wall where the webmaster can post comments and observations that would not otherwise fit in to the content of the site.
We hope you find it interesting! 7/25/2007
I attended a design workshop yesterday, run by the UK Design Council. They are trying to encourage companies to use professional designers to improve their products and marketing instead of trying to compete solely on price. Manufacturers in China and India and other emerging economies have labour and overheads which are about one tenth those here in the UK, so trying to undercut them isnņt really an option.
We were asked to bring an example of "good design" for discussion. Hereņs what I brought:
The HP-12C financial calculator. Bought around 1990, the HP-12C had already been around for quite a few years. This one is still using the original batteries. Probably HPņs best-selling calculator and an icon in the financial services industry.
And it is still in production!
Of course over the years the technology has changed and the internal component count will have dropped. The newer processors can do complex iterative financial calculations instantaneously where previously there was a noticeable delay. The People accustomed to the delay didnņt trust the results from the faster processors, so the HP engineers had to artificially throttle back these calculations to "improve" the user experience.
The buttons have that solid HP "clickiness" and the calculator as a whole feels very solid. It is intentionally quite weighty (thanks to a metal plate inside the case). It uses RPN logic of course.
Great! A water-powered calculator using patented water battery technology, and sold as an environmentally friendly solution to all those non-rechargeable batteries. "No batteries, no electricity, just add water!" gushes the blurb. This must be a real breakthrough on a par with the invention of a perpetual motion machine. You can see the battery neatly integrated into the design of the calculator.
Letņs look at these water batteries in more detail:
- The endless supply of electricity lasts for "at least two years".
- You need to keep topping them up to allow for "evaporation".
- All the applications are devices like LCD clocks and calculators that use minute amounts of power.
The way they are being sold suggests that the power source is somehow water – giving an inexhaustible supply of energy. Well hereņs the bad news: you canņt burn water – itņs already burned.
These batteries work on the same principal as any other battery: two electrodes and an electrolyte. In this case the electrolyte is water. The electrodes are some alloy or other that will react and dissolve in the water over time to generate the electricity. Because the power consumption of LCD devices is so small those electrodes should last a long time, but not indefinitely, hence the stated lifetime. The product offers the "freedom of not having to buy batteries again", but luckily replacements are available, if a little pricey. I have a pocket calculator that has used the same tiny mercury cell for over last twenty years. Over that period I could expect to have tossed and replaced at least half a dozen or so of these "green" batteries.
Verdict: If you want a fun gimmick; great. If you want to go green; get a solar cell calculator. 6/15/2007I apologise in advance for upsetting the Apple faithfull, but how many people really use Apple Macs? I ask this because we often get enquiries from Apple users asking why we donņt have a Mac OS X version of our software (yes, I learned the hard way that the cool way to say it is "O S ten" and not "O S X"). Sometimes there is indignation, as if we were unfairly ignoring or even discriminating against this substantial minority. The Apple users usually reckon on the number of Mac users being about one in ten, and this is consistent with a survey we ran asking what OS you were using - Mac OS scored 10%.
But our server logs tell a different story, suggesting that about 3% of visitors to this web site are using Mac OS. That might be partly due to the nature of our web site, and might not accurately reflect the proportion of all computer users; but I am sure it is pretty close to the proportion of our audience who are running Macs.
How can that be? Perhaps Mac users are more passionate about the OS and are more likely to complete surveys. Perhaps people who write for the news media tend to use Macs and this skews the perceived proportion of users. And perhaps Apple do a better job of placing their products in the media as suggested by this recent article at MSNBC (note: MSNBC is part owned by Microsoft, but is a respected news medium).
Or maybe thereņs something wrong with our server logs!
The fact is that, for whatever reason, whilst Apple make excellent products, the proportion of our readers who are running Mac OS is almost certainly in the low single digit percentages. It would be great fun to buy the latest Apple computers and start building software for them but unfortunately they require a completely different set of software development tools and skills which we donņt have. For the time being we will have to leave Mac software development to the people who specialize in it. We now have a version of the Help File for the free version of Calc available in Spanish.
Many thanks to José Luis Montero Castellanos who has done the translation and generously made it available for the benefit of Spanish speaking users of Calc.
Gracias! 6/5/2007One of the bugbears of developing calculator emulators is that the floating point arithmetic on a computer is actually fundamentally different to that in a pocket calculator. This is due to the general purpose nature of computers and the very application specific way that calculator chips are designed. So if you rely on the computerņs arithmetic functions (which nowadays are almost invariably implemented in hardware) you can get some nasty surprises.
But how accurate are "real" pocket calculators? You can do some interesting tests and get surprisingly different results between calculator models, even for very simple calculations. Try this:
1 / 9 X 9 =
You should of course get the answer 1. But many calculators, particularly the simpler four function ones, will give an answer like 0.999999... It depends on the number of digits of accuracy of the calculator and how many "guard" digits the calculator maintains, which are extra digits of accuracy that are not displayed. Generally scientific calculators will have no problem with this kind of calculation, but you can start to use up this reserve of accuracy if you repeatedly carry out operations that take their toll of the guard digits.
A way of finding the number of guard digits is to subtract a large number from a small number and multiply the result. More sophisticated expressions can be used to analyse the accuracy of a calculator and Mike Sebastian has made a very thorough discussion of this elsewhere, to the point where the exact calculator chip used can often be deduced. 5/10/2007When I bought the last Harry Potter blockbuster DVD release for the kids I was offered the "Special Two-disk Collectorņs Edition". I innocently asked the assistant if it was possible to buy the standard one-disk edition aimed at ordinary folk like me who just wanted to watch the movie. Even if such a thing existed, I was told, they did not have it available for sale. So it looks as though the Collectorņs Edition is not so special after all.
Is there a sub-culture of collectors out there holding conventions and swap-meets? Should I keep it safe and wait for it to appreciate in value? Just think how much it might be worth in twenty years time if I donņt remove the shrink-wrap. How are earlier films in the series doing on Ebay?
And for that matter, does anyone look at the second disk in these two-disk sets? It was possible at one stage to buy a four disk set for one of the Lord of the Rings episodes. How on earth do they fill four disks? "The Making of the Making of the Making of LOTR"? Thanks to DVD "extras" we now know so much about the technology of special effects that we could make the films ourselves. 4/16/2007
Maybe itņs the march of technology, or maybe itņs the availablity of low-cost manufacturing in China, but gadgets seem to be proliferating, and they donņt always make life easier. Take a look at this technology breakthrough:
Thatņs right, itņs an electric stapler. This is the brightly coloured child-friendly version, but you could also get it in sombre office colours and no see-through cover. So it is clearly intended to have a use beyond being a gimmick to entertain the kids.
Hereņs how it works: you push the paper (max five sheets) and jiggle it around until it engages with a microswitch behind the stapler mechanism which sends a signal to the elaborate piece of electronics. Then the battery-driven motor starts up and there is a grinding noise and the staple is inserted. It takes about two seconds if all goes well.
Here is another stapler:
Admittedly you need both hands. You can feed the paper into it on your desk or just hold the stapler in your hand and bring it to the paper. The thickness of the stack of paper is limited by the size of the staples to about twenty or thirty sheets. Notice that it is much more compact, and has no batteries that might need replacing. It takes about half a second to operate. 3/16/2007If you are using Calc (any version) you can now download a properties file with up-to-date currency conversions.
The file can be downloaded by going to the Currency Update page and following the instructions. |
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