Use the Windows 7 Calculator’s New Modes, Features, and Worksheets
Posted on September 2, 2010 at 6:13 am
The Windows Calculator program has been a popular feature since the earliest versions of the operating system. With the release of Windows 7, the Calculator has been greatly expanded to include new modes, features, and worksheets. Strangely, many people are unaware of these features because Microsoft hasn’t made a point of introducing users to the Calculator’s upgrade.
Opening the Windows 7 Calculator
To open the Calculator program in Windows 7, click on Start>All Programs>Accessories>Calculator. Alternatively, you can use the Windows Key + r combination to open the Run command dialogue box, type Calc into the box, and click the OK button.
Windows 7 Calculator New Modes
If you’ve used the Calculator program in previous versions of the operating system you are likely familiar with the default, Standard Mode. This mode offers basic calculator functions found on any common calculator.
Click on the View menu and you will discover three additional modes. The Scientific Mode is useful for more advanced and scientific calculations including squares, square roots, factorial, and log calculations. However, Scientific Mode has been available in previous versions of Windows.
One of the new modes is specifically targeted toward programmers. The Programmer Mode in the Windows Calculator applications allows you to make Hex, Oct, and Bin conversions. In addition, you can use this mode to make Word size or length calculations. If you are a computer program, you will come to appreciate the simple interface of the Programmer Mode.
The final mode available on the Windows 7 calculator is the Statistics Mode. Here you can make a variety of Summation, Standard Deviation, and other statistics calculations. Not any more convenient than a handheld calculator, Statistics Mode on the Windows 7 calculator can help you get by in a pinch,
Along with the new modes, the Windows 7 Calculator also offer a number of other new features.
Other Features of the Windows 7 Calculator
Once again click on the View menu and notice that there are three features of the Windows 7 Calculator. The first one labeled Basic is the default setting. Select the Unit Conversion option and you can convert numbers from one unit to another. Particularly useful with the Unit Conversion feature is the ability to convert 11 categories of measurement including angles, area, velocity, volume, and more.
Another feature of the Windows 7 calculator is the ability to find out the amount of time between two dates. Click on View>Date Calculation and simply put in any two dates.
The Calculator will then report the number of years, weeks, months and days between the two dates. In addition, just the number of days is also reported. This is handy if you do a lot of financial calculations and you need to know just the number of days between two dates.
Windows 7 Calculator Worksheets
Not stopping at just the modes and features discussed above, Microsoft also built four worksheets into Calculator to help you with more complicated calculations. The first is the Mortgage Worksheet.
Here you can input a Purchase Price, Down Payment, Term (Years), and Interest Rate and calculate your monthly payments on a mortgage. In addition, you can even choose which variable for which to solve among the five.
The second worksheet allows you to calculate the lease period on any lease. You input the Lease Value, Payments per Year, Residual Value, Interest Rate, and Periodic Payment and the Calculator figures the lease period for the lease. As with the Mortgage Worksheet, you can also have the Calculator figure any of the six variables listed above.
The third worksheet helps you calculate fuel economy in miles per gallon (MPG). You input values for the Distance (miles) and the Fuel Used (gallons) and Calculator will report your fuel economy. As with the previous worksheets, you can calculate any of these three values by inputting the other two.
The fourth and final worksheet is similar to the third, fuel economy worksheet. However, this one calculates the fuel economy in Liters per 100km. This is useful for those users in countries who use these values rather than the U.S. standard of using gallons and miles.
Microsoft has put the Calculator application that ships with Windows 7 through a major overhaul in comparison to earlier versions of the operating system. Sporting four modes, two unit conversions, and four worksheets, the Calculator is no longer simply a quick choice when you don’t have a desk calculator handy.
» Filed Under Windows 7
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Wow the new Windows 7 calculator has some really nice features.
I never knew that there was a new version of Windows calculator. Cool!