Bye bye Prime

[Tugdual]

I gave it today to my son for his studies. My #1 recommandation was: always have a paper clip with you for hard reset, the rest you will learn on your own. So I'm no longer a member of the Prime owner community but I will remember the nice people here. Bye bye.

[aurelio]

(08-26-2014 07:04 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  I gave it today to my son for his studies. My #1 recommandation was: always have a paper clip with you for hard reset, the rest you will learn on your own. So I'm no longer a member of the Prime owner community but I will remember the nice people here. Bye bye.

But I hope you should own at least another HP calculator

[Michael]

I put the HP Prime in my drawer. For the future i use my oldie but goodie HP 48. It's a well designed calculator. Thank you William Wickes!

[Tugdual]

(08-26-2014 08:23 PM)aurelio Wrote:  

(08-26-2014 07:04 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  I gave it today to my son for his studies. My #1 recommandation was: always have a paper clip with you for hard reset, the rest you will learn on your own. So I'm no longer a member of the Prime owner community but I will remember the nice people here. Bye bye.

But I hope you should own at least another HP calculator

Yes I do! I'm the very satisfied owner of a genuine 15C of the even better (except for the battery life which is literally a million times shorter than the original 15C) new 15C LE and finally a near HP, the 34s which I adore except for the keyboard.

[eried]

(08-26-2014 07:04 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  I gave it today to my son for his studies. My #1 recommandation was: always have a paper clip with you for hard reset, the rest you will learn on your own. So I'm no longer a member of the Prime owner community but I will remember the nice people here. Bye bye.

What's wrong with ON+C reset? A better recommendation is just avoid using it for anything longer than 10 mins (chances are it will hang and erase all and/or you will struggle back and forth with the generic errors trying to discover what's wrong with your input)

[Tugdual]

(08-27-2014 03:58 AM)eried Wrote:  

(08-26-2014 07:04 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  I gave it today to my son for his studies. My #1 recommandation was: always have a paper clip with you for hard reset, the rest you will learn on your own. So I'm no longer a member of the Prime owner community but I will remember the nice people here. Bye bye.

What's wrong with ON+C reset? A better recommendation is just avoid using it for anything longer than 10 mins (chances are it will hang and erase all and/or you will struggle back and forth with the generic errors trying to discover what's wrong with your input)

Problem with ON+C is the possible mistake on sequence of operation and you can easily lock the Prime in the sort of "connected mode" that you cannot leave without hard reset. I already reported this issue before the last major firmware release but no change. To be fair I almost feel guilty I gave it to my son for some serious purposes. I really warned him he may be in trouble with this calc and I hope he will invest some time to tame it and circumvent the risks.

[Thomas Radtke]

(08-26-2014 07:04 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  I gave it today to my son for his studies.

Serious question, no rant intended: In your opinion, is the Prime ready for education, i.e. do other students using Casio or TI also have to deal with similar problems/a similar steep learning curve?

[Dave Dirckx]

I can only agree that the Prime is a major disappointment; I never saw a HP calculator crash so much... And then I'm not mentioning the half baked RPN, battery, screen, key colors, etc.

Fortunately I can fall back to the 50G and other models to enjoy a reliable HP RPN calculator.

[walter b]

(08-27-2014 10:09 AM)Dave Dirckx Wrote:  Fortunately I can fall back to the 50G and other models to enjoy a reliable HP RPN calculator.

The 50G is RPL, not RPN.

d:-/

[walter b]

(08-26-2014 09:56 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  I'm the very satisfied owner of ... the 34s which I adore except for the keyboard.

Which part of the keyboard you don't like?

d:-?

[Thomas Radtke]

(08-27-2014 10:19 AM)walter b Wrote:  The 50G is RPL, not RPN.

IMO we can forget about RPN being a well defined entry system. Before Thomas' discovery, there were already some interesting posts about how much (better: How little) thought HP engineers put into this entry system as a standard, and the deviations recently discovered fit this picture perfectly. Tim had something to say about this, too.

Might be more reasonable to use the term RPL to indicate the underlying operating system (in absense of a better name), which interestingly includes the 18C and 27S models.

[walter b]

Well, basically RPN features a finite stack, RPL an infinite stack. KISS.

d:-)

[rkf]

(08-27-2014 10:23 AM)walter b Wrote:  

(08-26-2014 09:56 PM)Tugdual Wrote:  I'm the very satisfied owner of ... the 34s which I adore except for the keyboard.

Which part of the keyboard you don't like?

I could imagine it's not the WP34S keyboard criticised, but that of the underlying HP-30b hardware. E.g. I own two WP34S calculators. The keyboard of one of them works like a charm, and that of the other one misses a not neglectable percentage of key presses.

Kind regards, Ralf.

[sol740]

I'm considering buying a Prime - is it really as bad as people are saying here?

[Tugdual]

(08-27-2014 12:16 PM)rkf Wrote:  

(08-27-2014 10:23 AM)walter b Wrote:  Which part of the keyboard you don't like?

I could imagine it's not the WP34S keyboard criticised, but that of the underlying HP-30b hardware. E.g. I own two WP34S calculators. The keyboard of one of them works like a charm, and that of the other one misses a not neglectable percentage of key presses.

Kind regards, Ralf.

This is exactly what I meant. Hardware issue, the design is very good. Also the whole case is not very well balanced. HP 15c sticks on the desk and has a very good keyboard, even the LE (I have been lucky, some reported defective keys)

[Thomas Klemm]

(08-27-2014 10:19 AM)walter b Wrote:  The 50G is RPL, not RPN.

What part of RPN don't you understand?

[parisse]

(08-27-2014 06:11 PM)sol740 Wrote:  I'm considering buying a Prime - is it really as bad as people are saying here?

Of course no, it has a few bugs like any young product, for my own usage (mostly CAS) it works very well, just keep a paperclip with you in case. I heard a lot of complains about bugs when the 49 was out, now they don't complain about the 50 (almost the same software).
People are always complaining in forums, they almost never give you positive feedbacks, despite the fact that the Prime has a lot of features that are much better than the 50 for example.

[sol740]

(08-28-2014 07:11 AM)parisse Wrote:  

(08-27-2014 06:11 PM)sol740 Wrote:  I'm considering buying a Prime - is it really as bad as people are saying here?

Of course no, it has a few bugs like any young product, for my own usage (mostly CAS) it works very well, just keep a paperclip with you in case. I heard a lot of complains about bugs when the 49 was out, now they don't complain about the 50 (almost the same software).
People are always complaining in forums, they almost never give you positive feedbacks, despite the fact that the Prime has a lot of features that are much better than the 50 for example.

Thanks for the rational reply. I was a seasoned 48/49/50 user and remember the bugs (!) and for this I want it for the CAS function mainly. The rest is no more useful than my crap Casio scientific.

So two honest questions:

1) will the tip of a mechanical pencil fit in the paperclip hole

2) Does it lose everything when you do a hardware reset (i.e. programs etc) or just CAS/Home window state?

[parisse]

1/ Perhaps if it's really thin
2/ You may loose data since the last powercycle. It's a good idea to do a powercycle from time to time.

[Joe Horn]

(08-27-2014 11:42 AM)walter b Wrote:  Well, basically RPN features a finite stack, RPL an infinite stack. KISS.

If that's the defining difference, then the HP Prime is an RPN machine, not an RPL machine, because Prime's RPN stack is 128 levels high, no more, regardless of amount of memory available. ;-)