Consumer Reports likes Numworks

[bbergman]

I purchased one of the first NumWorks calculators that came out, blemishes and all. I was super excited about the concept, and it looked good. However, as I quickly found out upon receiving it, anyone who has used HP's will have heartburn with it. The keyboard is mushy, and while I've never had any double-presses, it just doesn't feel solid to me. Also, the color scheme is terrible (yellow or grey on white), to the point where I used to get so frustrated that I just wouldn't use it. Yes, some of that is probably my age, and maybe the younger crowd don't care, but I was certainly not the only one who complained about this to them. They mostly ignored the crows, but eventually did a revision with a "darker" shade of yellow. Go figure.

I much prefer the Prime screen, and of course the Prime outperforms it at virtually anything. NumWorks had Python long before the Prime, which was nice in thought, but it was painful to use. I will say that the firmware upgrade process, and the transfer of information, was so much easier with NumWorks, but HP has been pretty solid and simple for a while now.

Ultimately, I just couldn't love the NumWorks. I "liked" it, but not love. I'm biased, of course. But I'll take an HP over the NumWorks any day.