Best calculator for the working engineer

[Logan]

(07-05-2016 10:00 PM)Ron Ross Wrote:  Well, for the PE exam, you are limited to only a few select calculators and you already have the two best calculators available for that exam.
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I suggest you buy an Hp 50G to try, they are fairly cheap to buy via Amazon, new even. I am kind of partial to the Hp 48G line and they are also very cheap.
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For an EE, the Hp 42s is indeed a treasure. However, your spending $200 to find out that you think RPN is dated and unnecessary would certainly be a big waste of cash.

I'm very aware there are only a few select calculators available for the PE, I mulled over the list for probably far too long

I do have an HP 50G which I am looking forward to learning to use, but it's not my priority right now.

As for RPN, I should have been more clear. I am dedicated to using the 35S for this coming exam, in RPN mode. I don't mind it at all, I enjoy it and see why it is appealing (I also taught myself to use the slide rule and I think that chaining calculations translates naturally from the one to the other). My grandfather used a 15C, which I inherited a while back. So RPN is fine, I just understand why people give funny looks when one talks about it. But I'm thinking of after the exam that I would like something even better than the 35S for general use, and the RPN calculators seem to be most designed with the engineer in mind, the "power user", so to speak.

So the 42S is very intriguing. I played around with Free42 a bit but really need to read the manual before I feel comfortable with it. I'm really hoping the build quality of the Swiss Micros 42 is good, and I wouldn't mind the landscape version if the function keys are intuitive. The WP 34s also looks good functionally but I can't get around the hardware