Answer Please Unit Converter for Pocket PC

Reviewed by: Paul Schneider, Ph.D., December 2004, send e-mail
Published by: Neohand, go to the web site
Requires: Pocket PC with 180KB free system memory, .NET Compact Framework, Windows Mobile 2003/Pocket PC 2003
MSRP: $10.95

Answer Please Unit Converter (APUC) is designed to provide you with a handy conversion tool for just about any unit of measure you can think of. In your everyday life you'll probably run into instances such as converting gallons to quarts, miles to feet, or your restaurant tab into the appropriate tip amount. Although the average person probably won't find APUC to be an indispensable everyday utility, anyone who cooks a lot, measures items on a regular basis, does scientific work, or travels to different countries is likely to find APUC helpful in a number of situations.

APUC is divided into several subtools. The primary one is the Unit Converter. This converter has 22 different categories of measurement including Acceleration, Area, Circular Measure, Computer, Cooking, Density, Energy, Force, Length, Line Density, Power, Pressure, Speed, Spread Rate By Mass, Spread Rate By Volume, Temperature, Time, Torque, Viscosity-Dynamic, Viscosity-Kinetic, Volume and Weight. Have you ever cooked and wondered how many teaspoons there are in a dash? It's 0.0625 in case you were wondering. How about when your Canadian friend says it is 22 Celsius? Yup, in American that is a crisp, warm-ish day at 71.5 Fahrenheit.

The rest of the subtools consist of the Periodic Table of Elements, Tipping Information and Calculator, Clothing Size Converter, Birthdays and Anniversaries, and of course free updates. While you may be just dying to know the boiling point of Barium (2,171F) or what you should give your girlfriend on your first anniversary (paper), probably the most useful tools here are the tipping calculator and clothing size converter. For those of you who travel a lot, the clothing size subtool provides you with conversions for the differing clothing size standards found in Japan, UK, US and Australia. Now there is no more guessing about what size dress to buy after you mistakenly gave paper as a gift!

For some people, the most useful tool of the bunch may be the tipping calculator. Tapping in the total, the tax and clicking on a desired percentage will give you the correct tipping amount and bill total. In addition, there is advice about tipping for various countries that will help you understand what type of tip you are expected to leave for various services.

Initially the program performance is sluggish, taking about 15-20 seconds to load up on my Axim, but once started the program responds quickly. The only real issue I experienced was an initial problem with the 18% tip button not working, but an e-mail to Neohand's technical support and a reinstall fixed this small problem. In the end I just have to admit it: I am the type of person who wonders what a … is when measured in … and having the Answer Please Unit Converter easily available has been quite the treat. Recommended.

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