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"Are you sick and tired of wasting $.99 - $1.99 at a time trying to find the perfect calculator app for your iPad? Hopefully your search can end right here and right now without having to spend another dime. Calc XT, an iPad-optimized calculator and note-taking app, is available for free for the next two days to celebrate its release."

Normally priced at $0.99 USD in the iTunes Store, for today and tomorrow it is being offered free as a promotion on it's release. Full-featured in portrait and landscape modes, and if you do have it in landscape mode, it displays a notepad to the right of the calculator. Notes are taken by dragging your finger across the screen. You can also change the pen color from black to red. The notes you create can be copied or you can send them off via email. Free is a very good price.

"It looks like a fourth generation of my family is going to be introduced to the ways of reverse Polish notation calculators. That's because my three-year-old son, an iPhone fan in his own preschool way, is about to be exposed to Hewlett-Packard's new iPhone application that fully emulates the company's 12c financial calculator."

This is a great calculator, that can do just about everything except wash your clothes. I've had one since the early 80's, in fact I still have the original one I purchased when I started college. Then the price was about $129.00 US, a hefty sum back then to be sure (only $80.00 US now however). Now you can get one in the iTunes store for $14.99 US, and get the 15C version for $29.95 US (more suitable for scientific calculations). I think the biggest plus about this whole deal is you don't have to try and find those small batteries that no one seems to carry!

Figure 1: Calculating in landscape mode.

There are numerous calculator applications in the iTunes store, as well as the built in one for the iPhone/iPod Touch. However CalcPad for the iPhone/iPod Touch is a bit different, and the simplicity of it makes it one to consider. There isn't a lot of flash to it, and you can see that as soon as you open up the program. But what it does, it does very well. The calculator does the 4 main functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) as well as calculating percentages and powers. You can either view it in normal view, or tilt your iPhone/iPod Touch to view it in landscape mode.

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