Count is simply a Speed thing. It will count to a Billion by 1's and update the display every 10,000,000. These are big numbers, but modern PC's can handle this in a couple seconds...or less. The Total Time will be displayed when done. It takes about 45 seconds on my 450mhz PC running Win98. At any rate, if you decide that you don't want it to run all the way through, just click the End button and it will end immediately.
Version 2.0.0 has been completely redone and is now approximately 5 times faster. Count now runs in less than 9 seconds on my 450mhz PC running Win98. Give it a try.
Version 2.1.0 now has a new Menu Item called Target. If you click Target, you will see a series of increasing numbers starting with 10 million (10,000,000) and going up to 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000). If you have a slower PC, you may not want to count all the way to 1 billion (1,000,000,000) (the default Target). On the other hand, if you have a speed demon, you may want to try a higher number.
Version 2.2.0 has been Optimized. I made some optimization changes on March 23, 2005. My current PC is a 2.6ghz PC using Windows XP (SP2). It was running the compiled version of Count, up to a Billion, in 1.625 seconds pretty consistantly before the changes. Now, with no changes to the operating system or anything else, it counts up to a Billion in a little less than 1.1 seconds. There were no program changes. The only changes were in the optimization of the compiler.
Count is not meant to be any kind of High Tech fancy speed test. It should be able to give a fair indication of the difference between a sub 1ghz PC and a 3+ghz PC. At any rate, have fun with Count but don't get all serious about it.
DownLoad your free copy of Count.Exe
DownLoad the Count Visual Basic source files.