| Basic Facts - Physical Attributes - Functional Attributes |
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Calculators can be found almost everywhere and can be purchased almost anywhere. They come in a myriad of sizes and all add, subtract, multiply and divide. With so many options available, our calculator classroom is designed to help you make informed decisions. We hope you enjoy this short course.
(Please note, this course relates to business calculators - not pocket or purse sized consumer calculators.) |
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| Basic Facts |
What is the purpose of a Calculator?
The goal of a calculator is to reduce the amount of mental and manual effort required to produce computation results.
What is the most important function of a Calculator?
Nearly 75 to 80 percent of the work performed on calculators is addition and subtraction. That being the case, one of the most important measures of a calculator's value is simply, is it a good adding machine. |
| Let's Begin - |
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First Myth - All calculators are the same!
We all intuitively know the first myth to be just that, myth. While all calculators perform the basic functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and more, they simply don't look the same and in fact are materially different.
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Second Myth - The packaging on the calculator says "Heavy Duty," therefore it must be a good calculator.
Within the calculator industry itself, "Heavy Duty" describes a calculator that is expected to hold up under heavy-duty usage. A pocket or purse sized LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) calculator that you can pick up in your local grocery store is NOT a Heavy Duty calculator, despite marketing hype on the colorful packaging. For business calculators, print speed is generally the determinant in classifying a calculator as heavy duty, medium duty or light duty. If the print speed exceeds 4.0 lines per second, the calculator is classified as heavy duty. Print speeds between 3.0 and 4.0 lines per second are considered medium duty and those with a print speed below 3.0 lines per second would be considered light duty. Print speed and expected printer life normally go hand-in-hand. For example, a printer with a print speed over 4.0 lines per second will have an expected printer life of 1 million to 3 million lines of print. The expected printer life of one whose speed is less than 3 lines per second may only have an expected printer life of 500,000 to 750,000 lines of print. Medium duty and light duty printers are therefore considerably slower and expected to fail much sooner than a real heavy-duty unit.
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