The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Calculating in Google Gordon Woolf

Windows includes a calculator. Just go to Start, then Run... and in the box type "calc". What you get is shown below in Figure 1, but I never use it because the calculator on my desk is easier and it is annoying that you cannot type into the display on screen.

However, if your desk is like mine, the calculator, even though mine is actually an ancient "TRS-80 pocket computer" which has been in everyday use for 25 years, does tend to disappear under paper.

However, there is another calculator available to you that won't get lost — it is Google.

In the search box of Google itself, or in the box on the Google toolbar or similar toolbars from such as Groowe which you can find at http://www.groowe.com/ for either IE or Firefox, just type the calculation you want, as in Figure 2.

You can add, subtract, multiply and divide, or do a percentage calculation as shown in Figure 3.

And if you just want a rough idea of what that book on Amazon will actually cost you and whether it is cheaper here, just type in the figures with the three letter currency codes, so "19.99 USD in AUD" will give you the calculation shown in Figure 4. That was on the day I wrote this — it changes by the hour of course and is only approximate because it depends on whether you are buying or selling and maybe even on how your bank is feeling that day.

Yahoo, NineMSN and some of the other search engines offer similar functions, though generally not the currency calculator.

Digressing, you can see that "calculator" of mine in Figure 5 with more details at http://oldcomputers.net/trs80pc1.html. In 1980 it was an amazing machine; you can actually write programs on it! Who else has a computer they bought in 1981 that is still in regular use?. [Ed: My 1982 Casio PB-100 is still in daily use — GT]

Reprinted from the July 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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