Casio fx-9750GIII vs. HP35s - Professional Use

[Steve Simpkin]

(12-16-2023 04:56 AM)wb.c Wrote:  ...
Again, I want the emphasize modern “natural” entry as Casio calls it and “MathPrint” as TI calls it, that allow you to enter a problem as shown on paper. I’m not taking about single line algebraic entry. Sadly a lot of advanced graphing calculators don’t have this entry style on dedicated keys and require entering submenus to access these entry styles. Of the TIs for example, only the French TI-83 premium CE has a dedicated MathPrint fraction entry key. Most scientific calculators have this, both in Casio and TI, it is common place. For me, this is what broke RPN. No matter how good the DM42 is, it will never afford me the speed, ease, and flexibility that my TI-30X Pro MathPrint gives me, even with just number crunching.

I think it is ironic that the first calculator to allow natural algebraic "textbook" entry was the HP-48SX in 1990.
EduCALC catalog - HP-48SX

[wb.c]

(12-16-2023 07:50 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  I think it is ironic that the first calculator to allow natural algebraic "textbook" entry was the HP-48SX in 1990.
EduCALC catalog - HP-48SX

Wow, never actually knew this fact. That is ironic for HP. They went long on RPN, and now they are all but out of calculators altogether. I think the one thing that might have extended RPN relevance would have been a usable entry/input history. As others mentioned, even older mechanical adding machines printed the input history on the tape, and this was valuable to check entires. I don’t think there a single RPN calculator has this ability. RPN is basically like manually writing a program that is combining values with operands. It would be nice if you could set a start point and do operations and then when you have a final result, you can then review the entire input like a program and if there is a mistake, fix it and get a new result. That would be awesome.

[Dave Britten]

I've always though the fx-5800P was a much closer competitor to the 35S. It's non-graphing, but it's programmable, has 32 KB RAM, textbook-style input (if you so desire), and can save a library of custom formulas which can be calculated or solved, much like the 35S. And better still, it has non-volatile storage, and doesn't freeze up forcing you to reset and erase memory. Personally I'd take the fx-5800P over the 35S any day of the week.

[nickapos]

(12-16-2023 04:53 PM)wb.c Wrote:  

(12-16-2023 07:50 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  I think it is ironic that the first calculator to allow natural algebraic "textbook" entry was the HP-48SX in 1990.
EduCALC catalog - HP-48SX

Wow, never actually knew this fact. That is ironic for HP. They went long on RPN, and now they are all but out of calculators altogether. I think the one thing that might have extended RPN relevance would have been a usable entry/input history. As others mentioned, even older mechanical adding machines printed the input history on the tape, and this was valuable to check entires. I don’t think there a single RPN calculator has this ability. RPN is basically like manually writing a program that is combining values with operands. It would be nice if you could set a start point and do operations and then when you have a final result, you can then review the entire input like a program and if there is a mistake, fix it and get a new result. That would be awesome.

You can definitely do this with plus42 and quite possibly with free42. The printing functionality also exists in hp42. You can simulate the tape printing, either printing in normal or trace mode. The trace mode prints the program execution step by step and unless I am mistaken it was designed like this especially for program debugging. I have been using this for a while now in a similar manner like the adding machine tape.
It works well in mobile and desktop versions as well. If you have lots of inputs that you want to review or intermediate results you can have a tidy output on the tape.
But I would argue that hp prime is superior in this because you can keep the whole history.
You can also simulate somewhat this with hp50g but it’s not as straightforward as with prime or plus42.
Another way to do this in 50g is to keep your input in a list for future review and update and do whatever operation you want to do on this list. Again not as straightforward as with prime.

[wb.c]

(12-16-2023 05:24 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  I've always though the fx-5800P was a much closer competitor to the 35S. It's non-graphing, but it's programmable, has 32 KB RAM, textbook-style input (if you so desire), and can save a library of custom formulas which can be calculated or solved, much like the 35S. And better still, it has non-volatile storage, and doesn't freeze up forcing you to reset and erase memory. Personally I'd take the fx-5800P over the 35S any day of the week.

The fx-5800P is a very nice option indeed. Surprisingly it’s actually more than double the price of the fx-9750GIII. Definitely more parallels to the 35s as you have noted already. Thanks for that input.