When I started in this business (1997), advanced calculators — scientific or financial — were expensive. The cheapest full-featured scientific calculators were $20-30 and easily ranged up into the hundreds of dollars. Real financial calculators were $40-120. So we wrote financial and scientific calculators and charged money for them. Our first financial calculator was $39.99, written for PalmPilot, and our first scientific calculators were $29.99 and $49.99 for basic and advanced models.

Fast-forward a decade and our latest calculator for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is currently $5.99. The product is far more powerful than anything we wrote in the late 1990s and early 2000s but the market has changed. Calculators, especially scientific ones, have become a commodity in the software world. There are hundreds of them, most of them cheap-looking, poor-quality products.

Instead of fighting this trend we have embraced it by releasing powerOne Calculator Lite Edition. It is Lite as it has only a couple of templates and restricts how many you can create (1) rather than the 60 we include plus endless number you can create with the full version.

The calculator included with powerOne Lite functions in standard and RPN input mode, performs real, fraction and feet-inch math, and includes power, logarithm, and trigonometric functions. It includes a history of computations plus ten memory locations for storage. The same application runs on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

In addition, powerOne Lite Calculator includes templates — think mini-spreadsheets — for calculating percent change, tips, date conversions, exchange rates (with auto updated data), and summary calculations like average, max and min. In addition, you can create one for yourself, taking advantage of powerOne calculator’s simple formula-based language.

The full version includes all this plus 55 additional templates for conversions, finance, investing and real estate. You can also create an endless number of templates. [link to App Store]

The trend toward less expensive calculators is pervasive now. Everyone deserves a high-quality, beautiful calculator to call their own. And we will move where others won’t follow: ability to create your own templates, add-on templates and choose from those calculations that meet your specific needs for business and school.