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Investors Business Daily
January 16, 1998
By Lauren Gibbons Paul
Want to build that dream kitchen but wonder what your payments will be? Why
not sit down with a calculator or load your PC with calculator software?
Multipurpose calculators can let you experiment with
different financial options to see how much the renovation
will set you back.
Calculator and calculator-software makers have been
striving to make math easier for you with a host of built-in
functions.
Even math-challenged people can learn a lot with a calculator.
For example, if you are remodeling and borrow $50,000
for three years at an interest rate of 7.5%, the monthly
payment is a hefty $1,555.31. But if you forgo that subzero
refrigerator and a few other amenities and borrow just
$30,000, the payment is $933.19. That's pretty good ammunition
for reining in a spendthrift spouse.
The closet geek in everyone will love the range and
breadth of data you can uncover with the calculators
or software. They're all multipurpose in that the products
do more than math. For example, they can provide easy
currency conversions for the business traveler.
Using Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP-12C hand-held calculator,
you can figure the price and yield to maturity of a semiannual
coupon bond, make actuarial calculations such as single
present payment value and calculate amortization for
a loan amount. As a bonus, students can get help with
complex algebraic calculations using the HP-12C.
HP actually sells nine different calculators, most of
which are indeed mini-computers.
HP doesn't sell calculator software, but others do.
Simple calculator functions can be found on the simplest
software, such as Microsoft Corp.'s Word program.
Several new calculator software programs are on the
market. San Diego-based Odyssey Computing Inc. offers
BizCalc and MBA-Calc. They can be installed on PCs running
on the Windows 95 or Windows NT operating systems, or
on personal-information-manager devices running on Windows
CE.
Priced at $39.95, Odyssey's BizCalc performs many of
the same functions as the HP-12C. BizCalc sells for about
half the price of the HP-12C.
Odyssey Computing targets people in the financial field,
including real estate brokers and money managers. BizCalc
can help you decide whether to rent or buy, determine
lease payments, figure out appreciation and amortization,
and analyze investments.
Users can program BizCalc with frequently used equations.
And for you Einsteins, it can handle equations that are
so long they fill up to 999 lines of a computer screen,
says Karim Alami, Odyssey's director of development.
"Another advantage is you can copy data from BizCalc
into other programs running on your desktop, such as
a spreadsheet," Alami said.
BizCalc 7 uses RPN logic, or Reverse
Polish Notation logic, which does not require users
to hit the "=" key.
That may not seem like a big advantage to you, but apparently
it makes life easier for the mathematicians among us.
For example, on an algebraic-style
calculator uch as Odyssey's MBA-Calc), users enter
a calculation just as
it is written. For example, "4 + 3 =." When
you hit the "=" key, the result, 7, would be
shown in the display. The correct keystrokes for that
equation on an RPN calculator such as BizCalc would be "4
enter 3 +." (The HP-12C also uses RPN.)
But you don't need a doctorate in math to use BizCalc.
One reason is that BizCalc and other calculator software
have particularly good help screens. They set up many
of the math formulas commonly used. You just have to
plug in the numbers.
BizCalc and MBA-Calc can be ordered directly from Odyssey
or downloaded off the company's Web site at http://www.odysseyinc.com.
Copyright © 1998 Investors Business
Daily, Inc.
Metadata: HWP MSFT I/3572 I/8065 E/IBD E/SN1 E/FRT E/TECH
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