HP Prime or HP 50g

[ramon_ea1gth]

As a User-RPL fan, I would like to add my positive feedback about the HP-Prime. Yes, I know this sounds contradictory. But here it is my experience.

I like radio and wireless technologies (RF technologies) and it is part of my job. So sometimes I need to dedicate time to check things with some sheets of paper, a ball pen and doing some graphs and numbers with, maybe, a relaxing background music. Radio (wireless tech) has much magic that is understood when you take your time. For this quality time, using the personal computer is not the point: no distractions and Internet a few meters away of my hand.

Lately I have been working both with the HP Prime and the HP 50g. I know this sounds like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On the one hand my fingers know how to reach blindly each key and menu of the HP 50g, and I remember by hearth most of the RPL instructions from my HP 48g time. On the other hand I am still doing myself to the Prime and thinking about ways of customizing it to my preferences. But the set of instructions shares many similarities in both machines, so this is an advantage.

Recently I have been creating Smith Chart outlines (check this: it is a cool diagram) with the HP 50g with the parametric plotting. They looked retro-cool on the B/W display. But no comparison with the resolution, colourful results and speed achieved with the HP-Prime to generate the graphs: saving them with Afiles turned to be handy as a background for the following graphs.

In the end, while working with complex numbers (phasors) and checking formulae, I ended up with a nice user-RPL set of programs in the HP-50g. But while preparing input forms in the HP 50g, switching flags for the different graphs, creating subprograms to be called or copying and pasting, I found myself saying several times: ‘I did this in a more ordered way in the Prime’ or ‘the HP 50g is taking much time for some graphs, despite all the simplifications done and I don’t want to open the computer’.

I am discussing the use of HP-Prime with a colleague in charge of teaching math at degree level and there are some more coffees we intend to have about this. I believe that a powerful calculator can be the right tool to stay on focus while assimilating some advanced concepts. Of course, this does not discard at all the specific software we use for antenna design or for coverage calculations, to cite some examples, which are the right tools for those specific purposes.

But in my opinion, the Prime has enough power and flexibility to satisfy many advanced tasks as a handheld device. And I see the soul of the HP 48-50g series inside… although not with the RPN/RPL as the core philosophy, of course! I wish that the developers will continue refining the Prime with the dedication they have delivered to the previous projects since the HP 48 times.