what do you think of the HP 92?

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(02-02-2022 08:02 AM)dmh Wrote:  Your thoughts?

Lucky you :-) This is indeed a very rare calculator and one of the few LED models from HP that I could not add to my collection yet. So far I have an Hp97 and an Hp91.

The keyboard: Yes, it is different from the handheld models and can give a bad first impression, but actually it is excellent for working. Many years ago (must have been 1982?) I did an internship with a company that made, among other things, attitude control thrusters for satellites. They put several binders of vacuum-chamber measurement values and an Hp97 on my desk and made me analyse the data and derive some quality indices from it. It took a whole week, eight hours a day, of constant keyboard action to process those data. I have never before or after manually entered so many figures into any machine, be it pocket calculator, desktop calculator or computer and really came to like that keyboard! No bouncing or missed keys ever. At that time I mainly used my Ti59 and that was quite different in this respect. With my Ti that task would have probably taken me two weeks.

The display is just perfect for a desktop calculator. No comparison with modern LCD ones. Readable from all angles and in almost all lighting conditions.

Regarding the printer: Personally I never cared about these toy printers that use cash-register thermal paper which fades within some months and is too toxic to be recycled together with normal paper. In these HP desktop computers the printer is usually the first thing that will break. Fixing it is very very difficult if not impossible due to the nonexistence of spare parts. Have a look at the threads regarding this topic, especially the contributions of teenix. So if yours still works don't overuse it - it will not last forever.

Regards
Max