
%*$*#&#* Windows 7 Calculator - userbinator
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/4ec1b55b-b516-471d-aa77-6b37b69d8df6/action?threadDisplayName=windows&forum=w7itproui
======
lisper
It's not just Windows. I have an enormous investment in iPhoto -- lots of
curated albums with comments. iPhoto won't run in newer versions of MacOS, and
Photos won't run in older ones. So I'm looking at an event horizon: once I
upgrade past Mavericks there's no going back, and as long as I'm on this side
of the horizon there is no way for me to know if Photos is going to
successfully import my photo albums or not.

This has happened before. When Apple dropped support for Rosetta after Snow
Leopard I lost the ability to run a wide variety of useful applications. I
still fire up Snow Leopard in a VM now and then just to run one of those apps.
(BTW, running Snow Leopard in a VM is a non-trivial thing to do because
Apple's license specifically prohibits it, and Parallels enforces that
restriction.)

~~~
speeder
I work with mobile dev (among other things).

When you update your iPhone, you can't "unupdate" it, Apple after a while
always deletes the certificate of all versions that aren't the current, and
the installer always check the certificate before installing (this also means
you cannot install iOS without internet).

Xcode, also checks the iOS version, and its own version, some versions of
Xcode are tried to specific iOS versions... thus if you keep updating your
iOS, you will have to update your Xcode.

For some reason, completely unknown to me, Xcode is ALSO tied to OSX version,
For example Xcode 6.3 requires a OSX version more than Xcode 6.2, despite
having no huge differentes between the two and Xcode 6.3 don't requiring any
new OS capabilities that Xcode 6.2 didn't already used anyway.

But every time you update OSX and Xcode, not only they sometimes explicitly
require a new machine model, but they also get increasingly more inefficient,
using more and more RAM and CPU to do the same things.

Since right now, I am very low on money, this means I am stuck using Xcode
6.2, and trying to not misclick anything when I plug the testing devices and
iTunes nag me to update them... because if I allow them to get updated, I will
have to upgrade Xcode, OSX, and the entire machine, and right now sometimes I
can't afford even food, affording a entire machine (specially with our
currency getting completely broken and being only 25% valuable as it was
supposed to when designed, comapred to USD).

~~~
orbitur
If you have 8GB RAM, you should be okay to upgrade. I'm running 10.11 on my
2009 MBP, works fine.

~~~
speeder
I don't have 8GB of ram ;)

And this is why I mentioned ram in first place... The 6.2 Xcode already needs
6GB to run, this already killed one disk drive (because it is constantly
swapping when I am using Xcode... the drive could not handle the strain of
writing constantly all the time and broke down), I am using now a already
damaged drive (someone gave me a drive with theirs that on Windows don't work
anymore due to excessive amount of "bad blocks", the drive still work with
*nixes for some reason, so I am using it, since I can't afford a new drive
anyway).

------
wtbob
Meanwhile, bc(1) has been here all along:

    
    
        wtbob@wtbob:~$ bc
        bc 1.06.95
        Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
        This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
        For details type `warranty'.
        obase=16
        17281580835365214242
        EFD4823541245822
    

Twenty-four years and it's still working just fine!

edit: I can math

~~~
SwellJoe
Fourteen? Perhaps you should do that math again with bc.

~~~
wtbob
Heh, 1991 _seems_ like fifteen years ago…

~~~
SwellJoe
Getting old is weird. I catch myself thinking of records released in 2005 as
"new". (Even though I buy actual new music every week or two, and still remain
relatively on top of modern music.)

~~~
swah
I still get surprised I can buy booze. I'm 31.

~~~
SwellJoe
I got carded recently. I'm old enough to have kids who are old enough to drink
(I don't, but I could have).

------
loopbit
Just for fun, I've tried that with the OSX calculator (in El Capitan, in case
that matters).

When I paste the number in the article (17281580835365214242) into it, it
shows as 9223372036854775807. Typing it by hand does the same, when you enter
the last digit it transforms into that number, which is 0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF in
hex.

Funnily enough, if I paste the hex value (EFD4823541245822) and transform it
to dec, it shows as the correct number, the one you can't paste or type.

So, the OSX calc looks broken too, in an even weirder way.

edit: Forgot to mention this was in programmer's view. As far as I can tell,
other modes work fine.

~~~
sergj
Works for me after copying and pasting 17281580835365214242 it shows:
1,72815808353652E19

~~~
loopbit
Ooops, yes, as the other comment says, I forgot to mention it was in
programmer's view. Otherwise the number shows correctly.

------
frik
btw. Win8 calc got a loading splash screen as "feature".
[http://betanews.com/2013/10/28/windows-8-1s-calculator-
app-s...](http://betanews.com/2013/10/28/windows-8-1s-calculator-app-sums-up-
whats-wrong-with-microsofts-new-os/)

The Win10 calc app still takes a second or two to start up:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/3ng3f4/windows_10_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/3ng3f4/windows_10_calculator_is_one_hell_of_a_step_down/)

The old Win7 calc can still be downloaded from the Win10 store:
[http://www.thewindowsclub.com/use-new-
windows-10-calculator](http://www.thewindowsclub.com/use-new-
windows-10-calculator)

I always keep an old Derive 6 around, it's still be best CAS and it's syntax
compatible with the good old TI 89/92+/Voyage calculator devices. screenshot:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/sl/9/9f/Derive_zaslon...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/sl/9/9f/Derive_zaslonska_slika.png)

And the old WinXP PowerToy Calc is still good too:
[http://dan.hersam.com/2010/11/10/powercalc-in-
windows-7/](http://dan.hersam.com/2010/11/10/powercalc-in-windows-7/)

~~~
y04nn
WolframAlpha may be a good online option too

------
UnoriginalGuy
Yet somehow Windows 10's calculator is worse.

\- Also won't take in 17281580835365214242.

\- Inconsistently slow to load, sometimes "instantly" sometimes seconds.

\- Cannot double click to edit a previously entered formula

\- History is terrible now (not in-line, instead a different "tab" hiding the
data entry controls).

\- Copy/paste sucks. Cannot copy out a formula.

I understand programmers being conservative with data types, but in a freaking
calculator if you're trying to save memory by not making everything 64 bit or
better then you're incompetent.

~~~
rasz_pl
and its 47MB

~~~
anonymfus
Where do you get this number?

In the store ([https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/windows-
calculato...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/windows-
calculator/9wzdncrfhvn5#app-details) ) it says "Approximate size 3.07 MB -
5.79 MB", on my installation it says "368 KB" in the settings app and all
"%ProgramFiles%\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsCalculator*" directories are
about 5 megabytes together.

RAM usage exceeds 47 megabytes with about 5 or 6 calculator windows open.

~~~
rasz_pl
Yes, I meant ram usage. Specifically Working Set jumping above 46MB at the
start of calc, and Private bytes hovering around 30MB, all for small one
window app.

------
WalterBright
My favorite is open the "About Internet Explorer" box. Now try and select the
version number. You can't. So if you want to submit a bug report to Microsoft,
which needs a version number, you have to carefully manually tediously type in
that 20 digit or so string.

Madness.

~~~
frik
A cool little known feature about the old Win95 (Win32API) dialogs and error
messages was: one could press Ctrl + C to copy the text content.

Sadly the devs who created Windows NT, the Windows shell, Office in the
1989-1998 era all retired. And the overall high product of Microsoft products
went downhill.

In 2006 with the Longhorn and WinFS debacle it was already clear that dotNet
wasn't fast enough for desktop usage. Up to Windows 7 there were no dotNet
desktop included, everything was in the good, trusted and fast C++. Now with
development partly transfered to Microsoft India and another CEO you get a
mess of UX/UI/privacy that is Win10 and WinRuntime. All the old programs with
an old code base are still okay or goodm but I can't stand their newer
development (written from scratch apps). Maybe it's a culture clash, maybe
their QA process is wrong, maybe their vision.

~~~
darksim905
This has nothing to do with Windows NT vs new versions of Windows. In Windows
7 & above you can do the same thing but it's literally _only_ for error
messages.

~~~
frik
Windows NT _series_.

It should be common knowledge that Win 2000, XP, 2003 Server, Vista, 2008
Server, Win7, Win8, 2012 Server, Win10 (and XBox-OS, WinPhone8/10, HoloLens-
OS, Azure cloud) are all NT based and just an incremental new version.

------
userbinator
The biggest surprise to me is why this wasn't caught during testing -
especially since testing a relatively simple app like a calculator is often
used as an example of how to do testing: try the biggest numbers, smallest
numbers, zero, and some values in the middle. There's emphasis on testing the
extrema, since that's where bugs (like this one) are most likely to appear.

I should also mention there's another suitable replacement, the free Microsoft
Calculator Plus:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=216...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=21622)

It's got a horrible early-2000s skin but you can turn that off easily;
otherwise it works just like the old one with a few extra features (which I
personally don't find too useful.) It's strange they didn't just ship Windows
with some variation of that. Ever since I was caught by the modality "feature"
(decimal points and trig functions don't work in "programmer mode"!?) I've
replaced calc.exe with Calculator Plus.

~~~
csours
From the License Agreement: [1] Installation and use. you may install and use
the Software on a single computer, such as a workstation, terminal or other
device, residing on your premises that is running a validly licensed copy of
either _Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003._

Woo, Breaking the law.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L397TWLwrUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L397TWLwrUU)

1\. [http://imgur.com/bfOKbIf](http://imgur.com/bfOKbIf)

~~~
prodmerc
I've been told before that it's not breaking the law, just the agreement
between you and the company, which could result in a civil, but not criminal
case :-)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Yes, but without that agreement you're infringing copyright.

~~~
anonbanker
Nobody but Kim Dotcom goes to jail for copyright infringement.

------
jug
I can recommend SpeedCrunch. Free and open source, comes in an installer free
(USB/portable) version, and as for checking the value of the number in the
topic, simply type hex(17281580835365214242). It supports Windows as well as
OS X.

[https://bitbucket.org/heldercorreia/speedcrunch](https://bitbucket.org/heldercorreia/speedcrunch)

~~~
frik
SpeedCrunch is great too, it was originally inspired by the WinXP PowerCalc -
probably the best calculator from Microsoft:
[http://dan.hersam.com/2010/11/10/powercalc-in-
windows-7/](http://dan.hersam.com/2010/11/10/powercalc-in-windows-7/)
(SpeedCrunch still lacks the graph rendering part, though has other features
and improvements)

------
Beltiras
Solving something like that I would personally just fire up IDLE and use
Python ......

~~~
ldd
I'm glad I'm not the only one. It is perhaps more common among linux/mac
users, but windows user should just join the python-as-a-calculator club.

~~~
Retra
I've always wanted a handheld graphing calculator that ran Python.

~~~
avn2109
Great idea. This is your jailbroken old Android phone with Cyanogenmod and
Python running in a Terminal.

------
floatboth
Meanwhile, good old dc(1) uses big numbers (since OpenBSD 3.5)

~~~
cnvogel
And this funny line from the manual-page: (on Linux)

    
    
        > The input and output radices are separate parameters;
        > you can make them unequal,  which  can  be  useful or
        > confusing.

------
Ace17
We seem to put a lot of energy trying to make software calculators having the
same limitations of hardware calculators. Why?

~~~
ethbro
Because then we can sell fancier software calculators?

Penny Arcade has some great quotes, but re: porting scarcity to virtual goods
being 'like if the first thing God decided to create was AIDS' is my favorite.

------
aidenn0
And I regularly get mocked by my coworkers for having an HP calculator on my
desk right next to my notebook. "You know windows has a builtin calculator"

~~~
tiatia
You can use an HP48G emulator either on your computer or on your android
phone.

~~~
crististm
There's seems to be an emulator for everything these days. This is not the
point. A physical calculator (and not a touch-screen app on a tablet) has
something that the surrogate doesn't.

For one thing it does not require you to do GUI context switching. It does not
compete for mouse (or keyboard) with the other tens of open programs. I find
this invaluable.

On the other hand, touch screens take away tactile feedback. This gives the
same bland taste as the soft power-off switches.

~~~
gaius
Same here, HP-12C on my desk at work.

------
overgard
I usually use the python repl as a calculator -- easy to see history, bigint
support, and I can type a complex expression

~~~
iso8859-1
and infinite precision fractions!

------
mFixman
By far the best GUI calculator I used is Qalculate:
[http://qalculate.sourceforge.net/](http://qalculate.sourceforge.net/)

It's ridicolously fast and lightweight for the amount of features it contains,
and it's also free and open source.

------
J_Darnley
Typical of modern software design practices: hide everything that might
confuse the imbeciles that want to use your software. No radians, no hex, no
binary, no settings. "Can't let the user change something, they may change
it!"

~~~
WalterBright
People who need a "degrees" mode (instead of radians) shouldn't be using a
calculator anyway.

~~~
wtallis
Because all the good compasses, protractors, sextants, transits, and maps are
marked in radians, right?

~~~
WalterBright
Because conversion is trivial, and should be done on the inputs and the
outputs, not the intermediate values.

~~~
J_Darnley
Trivial for for major values but I wouldn't know what 23 deg. was in radians
without a calculator.

~~~
WalterBright
A special mode for that is not necessary:

23*pi/180

------
blue1
Meanwhile, "M-x calc"is reliable

------
option_greek
Not related to calculator but the Skype for business application refuses to
send anything over 800 characters to the other party. Whenever I run into this
(mostly while copy pasting chunks of code or long URLs to colleagues), I curse
the engineers/product owners who put that stupid limitation. I mean WTF were
they thinking when they put it in there anyway ? It's not a frigging SMS for
crying out loud.

PS: One can right click and send the same message as a story and get upto 8k
in length but that just shows how stupid the entire workflow is.

~~~
chris_wot
It's funny how there is no Skype code in Skype for Business.

------
douche
I can't stand the Windows calculator, I just install python instead.

------
krylon
I honestly have never run into problems involving such large numbers or at
least numbers of digits, but FWIW, I really like SpeedCrunch when I need a
calculator, if only because it maintains a history of inputs and results
across sessions.

Still, if that used to work on older versions of calc.exe, and then they went
and broke it, that is just plain stupid.

------
haser_au
Good lesson in keeping previous functionality with new versions, and
remembering all of the functional requirements.

~~~
wpietri
Yes, but also no!

"Remember" is a dangerous word to use here. Memory is fragile, fallible, and
stored in ambulatory meat, which is inclined to wander off between releases.
Store these use cases in automated tests that run automatically on every
commit. And make sure the tests clearly express the _intent_ of the
requirement, so that when somebody eventually breaks the test, they can
quickly get the purpose. (If not, they'll be inclined to just delete the
test.)

------
anonymfus
Workaround for Windows 10 calculator:

1\. Switch to Engineering mode.

2\. Paste your number

3\. Press MS button to save your number

4\. Switch to Programming mode

5\. Restore your number from memory

------
JustSomeNobody
Why stop at just the calculator?

------
a3n
Can you run the windows calculator from the command line? Something like:

    
    
      C:\> calc 20 + 5

------
amelius
I can recommend Wolfram Alpha for this use-case.

~~~
jagger27
WA is nice, but excruciatingly slow when you need something NOW.

------
DiabloD3
I'd be great if Numi came to Windows

------
ssahoo
why fix it if it ain't broke?

~~~
buserror
Mind you Apple also completetly fscked up the OSX calculator RPN mode a few
version back. Some intern went in an seems to have 'fixed' it to require
parenthesis.

Perhaps they 'fixed' it since, but I trashed it anyway, now I use the real
HP-16C on the desk.

