Top three calculators ?

[brickviking]

Typical. I leave the site for four days to write a script (in bash, no less) and what do I come back to? A quiz asking about the three most used calculators on my desk, which then meanders off into discussions about the Obfuscated C Contest, RPL-dislike, and Casios of all things. Yeesh.

Back on topic, my top three (@) calculators based on usage:

Quote:1=) HP50G: almost daily usage.
1=) Casio fx-82MS: almost daily usage for really quick calculations. (*)
3) fx-9750gII (upgraded to 9860's OS): previously fortnightly usage, but seeing far less use recently.
(*) funnily enough, the 82TL is literally sitting right underneath it, but that sees less use than the MS.

(@) Just to complete my 'collection',
4) fx-9750g+: predecessor of the 9750gII so it gets no usage (especially considering I accidentally erased its memory).
5) a very distant fifth, the Canon F804P: gets even less usage than the 9750g+.

Now for my meanderings.
My TL had an interesting life. I bought it a while ago, used it heavily until I got the fx-82MS, then handed the TL off to a friend for his Polytechnic studies. I used the MS for a while, the friend finished his studies, so I asked if he was still using the TL. He said no, and handed it back to me. Sigh. Now I have two 82-class calculators.

After that, it (the TL) got "solar"ised, i.e. I found a tiny little four-panel solar cell, sellotaped it to the top of the case, and ran some wires down into the battery slot through two cuts I made, making it into a 85TL with an AA battery. I'll never run out of battery power again, even considering these calculators are excellent on battery life already.

The HP 50G has been used each time I want to do a list of calculations, and currently contains my yearly grocery totals (and programs to process them) and some tutorial programs, a HP-41 emulator (thanks Chris, I'll get some cash to you for an upgrade later) and a calculator for digits of pi. It might not be as quick as a sped-up 9750gII, but it beats it hands down for customisability.

The 9750gII got an upgrade a while ago, so it behaves just like a 9860gII without a backlight. It also contains a grocery program I haven't yet RPL-ised, and a nice set of unit conversions and other useful functions I hardly ever use because it's generally outperformed by the 50G.

EDITS (July 2018): Solar cell got munted, finally, so I simply discarded it and went back to the normal 82TL behaviour. Swapped the TL out for the MS for occasional use, as a command history can be useful sometimes. (Nov 2018) Added all my other calculators, because I did use them at some time…

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