Unlocking the Hidden Features of Windows 7 Calculator
By Dave Taylor
The Question:A friend was telling me that the Windows 7 calculator app has a ton of hidden features, including the ability to calculate the number of days between dates and the ability to easily compute monthly mortgage payments for purchasing a house or car. My husband and I are actually getting ready to buy a house and having a mortgage calculator on my Win7 PC would be darn helpful. Can you show me how to unlock the hidden calculator features?
Dave’s Answer:
I don’t know if they’re “hidden” features, per se, because all you have to do is poke around a bit on the different menu options in the calculator program to find the date calculator, mortgage calculator, etc, but I will say that it’s likely the vast majority of people who launch the application then just assume it’s a simple four-function calculator that can help you figure out how to split the lunch bill, but not much more. That’s a mistake: in fact it’s a remarkably capable little program.
Ironically, the Mac OS calculator suffers from the same lack of glitz and it too can do all sorts of calculations and can even retrieve stock values if you want to do calculations like “what’s my 37 shares of Microsoft worth today?” That’s the subject of a different article, however, so let’s stick with MS Windows and calculators.
As usual, the fast way to launch the app isn’t to dig around for it in “Programs” but to just type in the first few letters of the name and let the START menu do the work:
You can see it on the top, so you can click on it or – a handy tip – you can also just press Enter if it’s the highlighted option too, which is even faster. “c-a-l-c-Enter” and it’s running.
So here’s what it looks like in its default mode:
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This post is excerpted with permission from Dave Taylor.
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