All-Knowing Measurement Converter

If close approximations are not good enough, seek guidance from the one who knows exactly what it means to be dead accurate. When it comes to measurement units, they don't get much better than Das Unit Converter.

Starting from our schooldays we got more and more used to calculate and compare various physical and empirical values, many of which we use throughout our existence. Some of them, like time, distance, area, speed or temperature, to name a few, are common knowledge and we use them on a daily basis. Nevertheless, there are also many more out there that serve only the specialists or scientists and the general public seldom crosses paths with.

Fortunately, all of these units of measurement are at our fingertips since they can be easily found on the Internet, with additional explanations. For those who prefer to have the information offline, there are a lot of dedicated applications that can convert to and from just about anything. An example is Das Unit Converter, a free utility that aims to make the search for online conversions obsolete, coming fully equipped to show you this is not an overstatement.

The software comes bundled with a couple of thousands of units that are neatly tucked in over eighty categories. To make things better, anyone can add more with a few clicks. Working with it is a breeze thanks to a well-organized interface, focused on functionality. There is, nonetheless, a visible shortcoming about it, namely the fact that all the category names are written in caps and this can be quite annoying for an important number of users.

You will be able to easily find the category you're interested in thanks to the search feature or by scrolling the vast, alphabetically organized list sported by this tool. To make things even more facile, while the list field is active, you can press a letter in order to automatically access the category whose name begins with that character.

The software comes with a ''Tool Bar'' where all the main commands are placed for lenient access. Besides the search function, you can find there buttons that launch the calculator, copy the conversion result to the clipboard, open the application history to review your previous conversions and even more. Thusly, you will be able to write then save notes, invert the units and open the tab that enables you to input additional measurements.

A great thing about Das Unit Converter is that you can update the unit definitions, load the latest currency rates and check for a newer version with a single click. The ''Update'' feature makes it possible to have these three tasks accomplished in the same time. You just need to have the Internet connection active, the application will know what to do.

Anytime you want to check how many units and categories you have at your disposal, simply head to the search tab and press the ''Stats'' button. The utility will take only a couple of seconds to introspect and assess its database before showing you a complete list with all the measurement items and their classification. The grand total when writing this review was a whopping 2017 units arranged in 82 categories.

In case you want to configure the format of the result, the ''Settings'' menu is there to help. By default it is set to ''Auto'', but you can opt for one of the three available options: decimal, fraction or scientific. For the latter there is also the possibility of specifying the precision, which ranges from 1 to 10. What this means is that if you choose the maximum, for example, the answer will be displayed with up to ten digits after the decimal comma.

Another thing you shouldn't worry about when operating this tool is the stress on system resources. This software barely moves the CPU meter to a measly 2% usage for a fraction of a second, the time it needs to perform any conversion. Insofar as the physical memory is concerned, during our tests it barely moved pass 20 MB.

The Good

High on the list of strong points for this utility is the overwhelming amount of items it stores and also the ability to update the database for measurement units, the world currency rates and the application itself, all in the same time. It's also great to have the possibility to add new items to the listing, values that can only be found in the part of the world you live or are interested in.

The abilities to take notes and launch the calculator are some good bonuses and if you want a bit more explanations about the usage of its functions, you can rely on the help file that comes bundled with the software.

The Bad

Here is little to say about negative aspects relative to Das Unit Converter, but a couple of them can be found though. The first one is the caps issue that makes reading the category list somewhat difficult and the other pertains to the fact that there are no direct links in the search results. Certainly it would have been a lot better if in the result box were direct links to the categories that contain the sought after term, therefore further easing the navigation.

The Truth

There is no doubt that you can't go wrong with this tool in your utility belt. It simply works. The database is all-encompassing, the feature set very strong and to top it all, you don't have to pay anything to get and use it for as long as you please. If conversions is what you need, seek no further because this is what you're looking for. If you're interested in a version that doesn't need to be installed, be sure to check out the portable edition.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: