Advice on Purchasing an HP

[burkhard]

(09-21-2018 09:54 AM)brickviking Wrote:  Cons:

I've got a few HP50g as well. You left off one of my biggest cons with it--it's bloody ENORMOUS!
The HP48 (and I bought one new in the early 90s and still have it) is pretty big as well.
These are both desk calculators.

As some other folks alluded... figure out first if you like RPL or pure RPN. I've got a bunch of both and for my needs I really prefer straight RPN. My programs are fairly simple, especially these days, and I find tougher to remember RPL intricacies for occasional programming tasks. I find RPL a steep learning curve which gets complicated by symbolic math provisions (exact and approximate values) that most people don't need. If you want symbolic math, you need one of these RPL machines, though.

The RPL calculators do tend to be pretty big in general, so factor that in. Also, keep an eye on the displays. The early ones (HP28, HP48 blue-screen) tend to be rather low contrast.

If you like plain RPN and are not a collector, but a user, I would seriously consider the DM42 as well. It's based on the HP42S, a fantastic machine, but is much faster, has a far better display, and easy I/O with a PC. It's not cheap ($200), but is built stoutly, and has a devoted active cult following, and is in active production. A real HP42S tends to be about as pricey--they are highly sought after. Both are very pocketable. If you want a graphing calculator, they are not a good choice, though... very rudimentary in that respect.

I have a 35S as well. It's cheap, looks great, is compact, and RPN, but it's got some things I truly hate:
1. Display is weird / ugly proportions (subjective) / a step backward for a fairly modern calculator.
2. No rectangular ↔ polar functionality.
3. Complex number handling clumsy
4. Number base operations & integer arithmetic (binary, hex, &c.) clumsy.
5. Alpha capability / labeling limited.

I give the 35S to my kids to brainwash them into RPN. If they damage them, it's not the end of the world.