Flush and recessed displays of hp 27s calculator.

[Vincent Weber]

(06-12-2024 04:41 PM)bxparks Wrote:  

(06-12-2024 03:57 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  $55 USD is a good price for a great calculator. The 27S might not be "programmable" in the traditional sense, but there are many use cases where the solver is quicker, easier, more intuitive, and more memory efficient than writing an RPN program.

The 27S is an algebraic calculator that's 35 years old. Besides nostalgia, I'm curious why someone would prefer the 27S over a modern algebraic calculator, for example, the Casio fx-9750GIII, which now sells for about $30 new. The 9750GIII handles everything that the 27S does, plus far more:

* multi-line LCD display
* Casio BASIC programming
* MicroPython programming
* CAS using KhiCAS addon
* graphing
* spreadsheets
* TVM
* general root solver, polynomial root solver
* complex numbers
* rational numbers
* base conversions (hex, oct, bin, dec)
* matrix, vectors, and simultaneous equations
* statistical analysis, curve fitting, statistical distributions
* standard AAA batteries (not the Li-Ion junk)
* and more...

I can understanding paying a little extra for an RPN scientific calculator, since those are no longer made. But a 35-year old algebraic calculator doesn't make sense to me.

The 27S has an equation-based language where every statement is an expression, and where you do not need any input command, you can see the variables in a menu and assign them or solve them directly. This is very simple, yet powerful and elegant, and to my knowledge this is quite unique among calculators.