power supply

[brickviking]

(12-12-2015 04:09 AM)wojtek Wrote:  

(12-02-2015 06:26 AM)guzmanrt Wrote:  I ordered an HP 50g on Walmart.com a few days ago. It just came in on 12/01 and I picked it up at the store. Came with a usb cable for the computer. I could not really find an ac adapter for it online anywhere. Anybody know anything different? I would like to be able to plug into the wall to save battery power. Seems like the technology is moving away from adapters in some areas.

My 50g (3 pieces) are powered by 4 nimh (eneloop) accus. If not heavily used, say half an hour a day, they last a few months. I would not bother with adaptor. Unless you use 50g a few hours a day, but changing accus once a week would still be more convenient than playing with cables and adaptors.

I'd have to back up what wojtek has said. My four alkaline AAA batteries have only recently been changed since I bought the calculator a year ago, though I'm sure my usage is pretty light in comparison to others here. Keeping the calculator tethered just to save batteries could be seen as a false economy by some, or at least inconvenient. Yes, you gain the ability to run the calculator without batteries, but there aren't too many programs that require running times outside the lifetime of a set of batteries.

You're probably already aware that the HP-50G doesn't charge its batteries from the USB, but I find the only real use of the USB cable aside from data transfer is to keep the calculator "live" (only useful if you've got programs actually running) while you switch the four AAA batteries over. There's also a CR2032 battery for the same purpose, you just can't have the calculator powered up.

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