This is why I use Google instead of Bing

[oceanseleven]

In my opinion, a dynamic calculator at the top of the first page of your search results is not the reason someone would choose Google over Bing.  If it is, I would like to know how many times per day you need to do a calculation.  If it's a lot, then why aren't you using a calculator application.  If it's not something you do often, does it really matter that you would have had one extra click to get to a dynamic calculator with Bing.

 

I could do a side by side of search results for a video and Bing will have actual videos embedded at the top of the page, Google just provides links.  Maybe that is the reason why I choose Bing.  Or maybe it's because I actually get paid for searching with Bing Rewards and Google doesn't give me anything.  Really it is just a personal preference and if you do a search with either one, the results are going to be similar.

[cork1958]

  On 23/01/2014 at 20:03, Lord Method Man said:

You're really bad at searching... I even used the same poor grammar that you used.

 

 

Right on!

 

Exactly what I came up with and even used same bad grammar also!

 

I'll stay away from Google at all costs, if possible, and IT IS!!

 

Not that I use Bing exclusively either though.

[justin76]

the thing about google is you can ask any way you like. "how much gram in an ounce", "grams in ounce" and 100's of other combination

 

but bing is very specific... thats what make google great

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:01, oceanseleven said:

In my opinion, a dynamic calculator at the top of the first page of your search results is not the reason someone would choose Google over Bing.  If it is, I would like to know how many times per day you need to do a calculation.  If it's a lot, then why aren't you using a calculator application.  If it's not something you do often, does it really matter that you would have had one extra click to get to a dynamic calculator with Bing.

I do this quite often actually for on the fly work related computations or conversions. For more complicated stuff that google can't do I will drop to wolfram alpha. But, can you recommend a calculator app that is as easy as google and free (I'm being serious -- I would like to know of something that will serve me better for both of these things)?

[+Random Stranger Subscriber¹]

http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010060011L13905293341416139
http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010060021L13905293341416139
http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010060031L13905293341416139
http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010060041L13905293341416139
http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010060051L13905293341416139
http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010060061L13905293341416139
 

 

this images show what happens when i type a movie or a person or a mathematical constant in both engines

 

google is by far more helpful with extras that are convinient.   so i use google.

[Jollibee]

Here's why you should not use Google as your calculator:

[oceanseleven]

The Windows 8 App store has an app called "Unit Conversion" and I'm pretty sure the Apple app store has something similar also.  Really just do a search on any app store and I would guess there is a good chance you will find an app that is specific to this type of task.   

 

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:11, snaphat (Myles Landwehr) said:

I do this quite often actually for on the fly work related computations or conversions. For more complicated stuff that google can't do I will drop to wolfram alpha. But, can you recommend a calculator app that is as easy as google and free (I'm being serious -- I would like to know of something that will serve me better for both of these things)?

[BajiRav]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:01, rippleman said:

trying inputting the search "how many grams in 2 ounces" and you will see what he was meaning...

...so what am I looking for here?

[justin76]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:29, Jollibee said:

Here's why you should not use Google as your calculator:

unfortunately there is mathematical proof that 1=0 http://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/10001.1-8.shtml

[+virtorio MVC]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:38, BajiRav said:

indulge_me.PNG

...so what am I looking for here?It

I don't know, but it's not what I'm looking at.

[Matthew_Thepc]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:43, virtorio said:

I don't know, but it's not what I'm looking at.

You're outside the US ;)

That's why I never recommend Bing to people outside the US, but inside it's great. Gotta love this country :D

[+Random Stranger Subscriber¹]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:29, Jollibee said:

Here's why you should not use Google as your calculator:

 

 

 

 

Seriously?  Google calculator is to help you calculate simple things you might need on the web, as a convinience.

Maybe to help you calculate a price in the online checkout, or check something on your online banking website.

 

In no universe any thinking person expect it to be acurate if you are calculating Trillions!     The people who programmed it obviously did not plan for that, and for a good reason!  It's preposterous!

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:29, Jollibee said:

Here's why you should not use Google as your calculator:

<snip>

That's just a rounding error with the floating-point implementation, such things are common. Most of the time they are less interesting though.

 

 

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:59, panacea said:

Seriously?  Google calculator is to help you calculate simple things you might need on the web, as a convinience.

Maybe to help you calculate a price in the online checkout, or check something on your online banking website.

 

In no universe any thinking person expect it to be acurate if you are calculating Trillions!     The people who programmed it obviously did not plan for that, and for a good reason!  It's preposterous!

You always have to be careful for floating point rounding error like that. It's not only a Google issue. Google just exhibits this particular error. It's typically not an issue unless you are doing an iterative solution where rounding errors accumulate.

 

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:31, oceanseleven said:

The Windows 8 App store has an app called "Unit Conversion" and I'm pretty sure the Apple app store has something similar also.  Really just do a search on any app store and I would guess there is a good chance you will find an app that is specific to this type of task.   

I've seen that, it can't be used in conjunction with equations (and is slower to select than just typing things out anyway for simple conversion queries). I'm talking about things like: (65pJ)/(35pJ + 4nJ + 65pJ)*100=

 

In general, why would a Windows 8 application be better if it forces me to have to jump to full screen mode anyway? I'm doing this for work so I'm going to be on the desktop and probably copying things to/from terminal or an editor. 

[BajiRav]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:31, oceanseleven said:

The Windows 8 App store has an app called "Unit Conversion" and I'm pretty sure the Apple app store has something similar also.  Really just do a search on any app store and I would guess there is a good chance you will find an app that is specific to this type of task.

Don't even need a separate app ever since Calc was updated in Windows 7 (I think or was it Vista?)

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

  On 24/01/2014 at 03:15, BajiRav said:

Don't even need a separate app ever since Calc was updated in Windows 7 (I think or was it Vista?)

calc.PNG

Except this misses the intent of my question, see my example in the post above. Calc is fine if all you are doing is simple conversions alone (well, even then, it's rather a hassle to use compared to google/bing), but you can't do equations with it unless you want to do them step by step like you would with a 95 cent calculator. I dunno about you, but I would never do that simply because it is error prone. The only thing I use Calc for is checking bit fields.

[tsupersonic]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:29, Jollibee said:

Here's why you should not use Google as your calculator:

Lol, if you're using a calculator to compute that, you have bigger problems ;) 

[oceanseleven]

  On 24/01/2014 at 03:08, snaphat (Myles Landwehr) said:

That's just a rounding error with the floating-point implementation, such things are common. Most of the time they are less interesting though.

 

 

 

You always have to be careful for floating point rounding error like that. It's not only a Google issue. Google just exhibits this particular error. It's typically not an issue unless you are doing an iterative solution where rounding errors accumulate.

 

I've seen that, it can't be used in conjunction with equations (and is slower to select than just typing things out anyway for simple conversion queries). I'm talking about things like: (65pJ)/(35pJ + 4nJ + 65pJ)*100=

 

In general, why would a Windows 8 application be better if it forces me to have to jump to full screen mode anyway? I'm doing this for work so I'm going to be on the desktop and probably copying things to/from terminal or an editor. 

 

 

I had a feeling this is the type of response I would get.  For some reason sometimes these type of threads get a political vibe and people sway to one side or the other and just lob whatever works for their "team" or whoever they like better at the other side.  With that said though, if you are talking about equations then Google would be a pretty good choice overall and probably quite a bit better than what Bing currently offers.  As for jumping from desktop to the Start Screen, I would agree with you there because that annoys the crap out of me too.  So if you would have started this thread and used that as your justification, I wouldn't have mentioned anything.  However, the intent of my post was to say that I find it curious that unit conversion is the deciding factor in choosing a "search" engine.

[hdca18]

I have gotten used to what to expect from google results. Bing isn't as intuitive imo. Google it is.

[Torolol]

the conversion also works for fiat currencies,

but sometime its the exchange rate information are kinda not so up-to-date for rapidly traded currencies.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

  On 24/01/2014 at 04:37, oceanseleven said:

I had a feeling this is the type of response I would get.  For some reason sometimes these type of threads get a political vibe and people sway to one side or the other and just lob whatever works for their "team" or whoever they like better at the other side.  With that said though, if you are talking about equations then Google would be a pretty good choice overall and probably quite a bit better than what Bing currently offers.  As for jumping from desktop to the Start Screen, I would agree with you there because that annoys the crap out of me too.  So if you would have started this thread and used that as your justification, I wouldn't have mentioned anything.  However, the intent of my post was to say that I find it curious that unit conversion is the deciding factor in choosing a "search" engine.

I didn't start this thread and don't care either way on whether people use Bing or Google so I don't see where you are getting a political vibe from what I've said (I even mentioned using Wolfram Alpha for calculations instead). I'm asking where equivalent and easier to use functionality can be had on the desktop since you seemed to be implying there was some better software for calculations. I've used various programs in my time (mathematica/matlab/maple/octave) and none of those provide anything as easy to use and built in calculators on pretty much all OSes are all simply terrible to use for any thing beyond simple number crunching (or checking bits). When you mentioned computations and and a dynamic calculator, it appeared (and still appears) to me that you are talking about a general purpose calculator not only a unit converter...

 

EDIT: and if you are referring to my comment about floating point arithmetic operations and round off-error, ieee754 compliant floating point math is well known to be inprecise after 15 digits. For example, printing PI to the 16th digit and beyond will be incorrect with standard OS mechanisms. Microsoft's standard print mechanism won't even try, it will just print zeros after the 15th digit of an FP number. What results you get vary by platform (Linux will try, but give you garbage). The Google issue was strictly designed with this in mind. It was no coincidence that those numbers are the amount of significant digits they are. You wouldn't see round off error otherwise.

[Rippleman]

  On 24/01/2014 at 02:38, BajiRav said:

indulge_me.PNG

...so what am I looking for here?

odd, i am getting the same result as virtorio as well

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

  On 24/01/2014 at 05:22, rippleman said:

odd, i am getting the same result as virtorio as well

Does it have something to do with it being "Bing Beta"? I notice it says that in the photo and it looks different from how Bing looks for me.

[Andre S. Veteran]

This is why I use Google instead of Bing:

 

 

Going from Google to Bing is like going from Visual Studio to Notepad.

[oceanseleven]

  On 24/01/2014 at 05:00, snaphat (Myles Landwehr) said:

I didn't start this thread and don't care either way on whether people use Bing or Google so I don't see where you are getting a political vibe from what I've said (I even mentioned using Wolfram Alpha for calculations instead). I'm asking where equivalent and easier to use functionality can be had on the desktop since you seemed to be implying there was some better software for calculations. I've used various programs in my time (mathematica/matlab/maple/octave) and none of those provide anything as easy to use and built in calculators on pretty much all OSes are all simply terrible to use for any thing beyond simple number crunching (or checking bits). When you mentioned computations and and a dynamic calculator, it appeared (and still appears) to me that you are talking about a general purpose calculator not only a unit converter...

 

EDIT: and if you are referring to my comment about floating point arithmetic operations and round off-error, ieee754 compliant floating point math is well known to be inprecise after 15 digits. For example, printing PI to the 16th digit and beyond will be incorrect with standard OS mechanisms. Microsoft's standard print mechanism won't even try, it will just print zeros after the 15th digit of an FP number. What results you get vary by platform (Linux will try, but give you garbage). The Google issue was strictly designed with this in mind. It was no coincidence that those numbers are the amount of significant digits they are. You wouldn't see round off error otherwise.

 

The people using Bing or Google comment was really more of just a generalization of what usually ends up happening and not directed at you personally, so my bad on it sounding that way.  In terms of a desktop app, Calc is one that I was thinking of.  The initial post mentions a simple unit conversion, which I've done fairly easily before on my desktop calculator application so that was more of the context of my post. 

[Torolol]

  On 24/01/2014 at 05:44, Andre S. said:

This is why I use Google instead of Bing:

 

Sans titre.png

 

Going from Google to Bing is like going from Visual Studio to Notepad.

Historique ?

that happens simply because bing thought you will search in whatever language that "Historique" words belong to.

if you change the language settings into English, this would happens: