Odds and Ends, Part Two: Calculator, Snipping Tool, and Math Input Panel

Andrew Cunningham | Oct 13, 2009 | Comments

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And we’re back! The second part in this two part series on the “leftovers” of Windows 7, those little features that are nice to have but ultimately too small to earn an entire article devoted to their inner workings. Join me, as I take a look at the redone Calculator, the Snipping Tool, and the Math Input Panel.

Calculator

At first glance, the Calculator is little changed.

Good ol' Calculator

Digging into the View menu shows a much deeper set of changes, however, very nearly on the same level as the redone Paint and WordPad applications.

Look at all the new stuff!

In addition to the traditional Standard and Scientific calculators, Windows 7 throws in a Programmer and Statistics calculator as well, making Windows 7 (and the netbooks it will come with) that much more useful in math class.

Of more interest for home users are some of the options lower down on the menu, starting with Unit Coversion.

Unit conversion

This is, of course, useful for converting one unit of measurement to another unit of measurement – Celsius to Fahrenheit, feet to meters, and so on. This has already saved me a couple of trips to Google.

Date conversion will tell you the number of years, months, weeks and days between two calendar dates.

Lastly, the Calculator provides a number of basic but useful worksheets, which will allow you to plug in some numbers and calculate figures on fuel economy, mortgages and car payments.

These additions to Calculator are small but definitely useful – if that is starting to sound familiar by now, it’s because “small but useful changes” is practically Windows 7’s tagline.

Snipping Tool

Snipping tool isn’t new to Windows 7 – it first came with Windows XP Tablet Edition, and later shipped with Windows Vista. However, since there are plenty of people out there who never used either of those operating systems, I thought it best to highlight the tool’s existence.

Snip away

That screenshot encapsulates most of the product’s features – choose the way you want to snip and the section of screen you’d like to snip, and then the program will let you save it as a .PNG or .JPG or any of Windows’ customary image formats.

Math Input Panel

The Math Input Panel allows you to draw mathematical formulas with the mouse or a stylus (on a tablet or touchscreen PC).

$Math Input Panel$

Math Input Panel

This is definitely on the “odd” side of “odds and ends,” but even so I can see it being useful to academics. Go ahead and draw in a formula (go to Help and select “Which areas of math are supported? to see what math you can use).

$A simple equation. Still too much math for me.$

A simple equation. Still too much math for me.

The Select and Correct button will allow you to fix certain symbols if the program detects them incorrectly.

When you’ve got the formula looking just the way you want it, you can click Insert to copy it to the clipboard. To put it into Word or your word processor of choice, just Paste it. Definitely useful for people writing papers for math or science class who don’t want to deal with the charatcer map.

And that’s all there is! I hope this series has been useful. If there are other odds and ends you’d like to see covered, by all means sound off in the comments section.

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