Hash Calculator

A computer has it’s own type of language more or less. Not in the sense of communication, but mostly to identify or verify different types of files or strings. For instance, checksums are used to check the integrity of files, and you can rely on specialized applications like Hash Calculator to generate it for just about any kind of string.

On the bright side of things, the application saves you some time and effort, and instead of taking you through a setup process lets you take advantage of its features from the moment download is done. As such, it’s also possible to have it carried around on a thumb drive in case you need to use it on other computers besides your own.

The application isn’t really much to look at, but this doesn’t mean it’s any difficult to figure out. On the contrary, the simplicity in design makes sure beginners and experienced individuals both get the hang of things in the blink of an eye. Fields are intuitive, and effort required on your behalf is minimum.

Unfortunately, there’s quite the downside to the whole operation, in the sense that the application doesn’t calculate checksum of files, but rather converts a text string. It needs to be written on the spot or pasted from clipboard in the dedicated field.

Results are delivered at the press of a button. You get to view the corresponding hash code for MD2, MD4, MD5, and SHA1 algorithms. Sadly, there’s no option to save all of them to file, but a double-click operation does copy the string of interest to clipboard.

All things considered, we can state that Hash Calculator is a pretty poor choice when it comes to checksum calculus. No doubt it’s able to deliver different types of algorithms at the press of a button, but it would have been useful to be able to calculate for files besides text.