Working in the computer science department here at york does have some advantages, like we get to ‘play’ with new toys when they arrive. One of the new ‘toys’ that we have in the department is an iPad.

The iPad is essentially a big iPod touch, with a nifty calendar interface. I’m no huge apple fan (I do own an iPod touch) but the iPad is a joy to use – if slightly pointless. When I say pointless, I don’t actually see any real ‘use’ for it.

However, one thing that I think should have been included with the iPad is a pen, like on older generation tablet-pcs. Now that would take the iPad to a whole new level – a proper note pad! When I was at uni, I used a tablet PC to take notes, but it was bulky and the battery life wasn’t that great (and not forgetting very expensive!) Yes, I know you can buy stylus that work with the iPad, but if it was ‘part of the device’ like say in PDAs or Tablet PCs. I don’t know if Steve ‘god’ Jobs didn’t include it because it would ruin the aesthetics of the iPad, or perhaps he’s saving it for the iPad Second generation…who knows. But if it does include a pen as an input and not as a (expensive) accessory  then I may be persuaded to buy one.

It will now be interesting to see iPad clones from the other side of the camp. See if there are any Windows 7 based devices, or maybe using Windows 7 Embedded or the new Windows 7 Phone OS…

ipad

Good news is that the new Windows 7 Calculator works on Windows Vista too, if it’s been ported or migrated to Windows Vista.

Windows Vista users who want to use the more advanced Calculator program from Windows 7 can download the following RAR archive which consists of calc.exe with its mui language file extracted from Windows 7 pre-beta build 6801.

To Run Windows 7 Calculator :

1. Simply unpack the content to another folder
2. Run the calc.exe to use the Windows 7 Calculator in Windows Vista.

To replace existing default Calculator program in Windows Vista :

1. Copy calc.exe to WindowsSystem32, and calc.exe.mui (in en-US folder) to WindowsSystem32en-US folder

Overwriting existing file (you may want to backup the old Calculator binaries first in case of error running Windows 7 version). Voila, now the new Windows 7 Calculator has been installed on Windows Vista.

Download the Windows 7 Calculator for Vista