Why Use Formula Calculators?

 

The FC Products offer these benefits to all calculator users:

 

• Greater efficiency – save time and be more productive
• Easier to use – simpler and quicker
• More automatic – does more to support the user
• More powerful – do more calculations in a single step
• More flexible – use all the features of edit boxes, and other Windows controls, for calculation entry
• Shorter learning curve – leverage off experience with edit boxes in other Windows packages
• Compatibility and integration – copy and paste between many other Windows software packages
• Safety and accuracy – less error prone, and there is a re-usable audit trail, plus the option of a saved copy of a calculation to re-load and check at a later time.

 

With a choice from FC Free, FC Lite, FC Aithmetic, FC Scientific and FC Max, there is an FC Product for everyone! 

Technical Benefits of Typed-in Calculations in Formula Calculators

The FC Product’s central, new-concept feature is that calculations can be typed or pasted into a multi-line edit box and evaluated by clicking a single button.

 

 

Calculations entered in this way allow the use of Microsoft Windows standard edit-box features, such as:

 

• Edit box contents still visible as a record of the whole calculation after the result is shown.
• Edit, for example to change numbers and re-calculate without re-entering everything.
• Copy and paste when entering or editing calculations.

 

Also, calculations can be saved for later re-use, or copied-and-pasted to/from a different software package, such as a word processor, spreadsheet or database.

Calculations Entered by Keyboard Typing or Clipboard Pasting

The entry of calculations into multi-line edit boxes, by keyboard typing or clipboard pasting, and the use of standard Microsoft Windows edit-box features, enables Formula Calculator Pty Ltd to implement calculators that have the following benefits, which sharply differentiate our FC Products from traditional button-operated calculators:

 

• Recalculation for different numbers or operations by editing and clicking a single button. Editing includes delete and re-type, insert, overwrite, plus copy and paste.
• Multiple Calculations at once – in parallel - with several cacluations eparated by commas.
• More done in a single step – automatically.
• Many features that are just as easy to use for complex calculations as for simple calculations.
• Calculations that are editable, copiable, pasteable, saveable and re-useable.
• Calculations that are exportable/importable to/from any other format or software package whatsoever. Some calculators can export to a limited set of built-in formats, but not re-import these calculations.
• Since the FC Product’s export is by manual copy and paste, calculations can be placed anywhere in any target document, not just as the only thing in an otherwise empty document from a limited set of targets, as with the Moffsoft commercial calculator. The author has done a great deal of this when writing Formula Calculator documents, and he believes that other authors would benefit from the same features. If the export is by an automatic menu feature, and if it creates an otherwise empty document that contains a record of the calculation, and if an author wanted the calculation to appear in a specific part of their document under construction, then manual copy and paste from the export’s target document to the required specific place in the author’s document would have to be done anyway. 

The Multiple-Calculations Feature

People don’t just want to do one single calculation. Rather, many will want to do:

 

• The same calculation more than once, but with different numbers. See the Budgeting and Cosine Law examples in the Help and User Manual for the FC Products, for illustrations of this.
• Related calculations, but with the same numbers. See the Volume, Surface Area and Circumference of a Sphere example in the Help and User Manual, for illustrations of this.

Single-Step Calculations

The FC Product concept allows the implementation of calculators that can do much more in a single step. This is more efficient. It is also less risky, because with automatic, single-step operations, there is less scope for error.

 

For example, the Statistics calculator tab page in FC Arithmetic, FC Scientfic and FC Max, can apply several statistics to calculations, not just numbers, when a single button is clicked. It will automatically do the calculations first, and then apply the statistics to the resuts, in one step.

 

 

Also, our new FC Conversion calculator, which can be downloaded FREE from www.fCalculator.com, can calculate and convert in one step. Users don’t just need to convert numbers – the numbers must come from somewhere, and this will often be a calculation. Existing conversion calculators can only convert a single number from one unit to another, for example, from square feet to square metres. If this is a conversion of the floor area of a building, FC Conversion can calculate this floor area with the measurements in feet, and automatically convert the result to square metres, in one step. It can also do several of these calculations/conversions at once, for example to calculate the area of each floor of a building in one step. Please let us know what you think about this new FC Product.

Complex Calculations

Button-operated calculators are only suitable for relatively simple things, and this is supported by commentary on the web (see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_calculator).

 

In contrast, the FC Products have many features that are just as easy to use with complex calculations as with simple calculations. It is only a matter of extra typing to enter a long calculation, and then, just as easily as with a simple calculation, users can:

 

• Evaluate by the click of a single button.
• Selectively edit to change some numbers, and re-calculate by the click of a single button.
• Copy and paste.
• See a record of the calculation after the final result has been shown.
• Save the calculation, and re-load it at a later time.

 

In contrast, button-operated calculators are much more difficult for complex calculations than they are for simple calculations. In fact, commentary on the web suggests that users have avoided them for anything other than the simplest things.

Try our Formula Calculator Products today to experience the difference yourself!