How do you like the Woodstock calculators?

[rprosperi]

(12-29-2021 06:30 PM)BobVA Wrote:  

(12-27-2021 11:31 PM)Jim Horn Wrote:  ...(I'll ignore the horrible battery charging).

Seeing this in a historical context made me think. I used the heck out of my 25 in college and I'm sure I probably powered it up without a battery pack, or with a poorly connected one, more than once. Never had a problem. The only time HP saw it again was for the ROM update.

Today? It's just slightly below dropping a case of leaky dynamite on my list of actions to avoid.

Is that just perception? Or is the risk greater? I'm wondering if the age of the ACT chip has significantly raised the risk of damage.

I've wondered this exact same thing Bob! I had a '21 and then a '25 in college and I certainly never gave charging them carefully a 2nd thought back in the day, and while it's possible I never plugged it in w/o batteries, or bumped it hard/dropped it while charging, all that is pretty unlikely, yet neither device ever failed or even flickered a tiny bit.

I too have concluded that age is key ingredient in this infamous Woodstock susceptibility, but what is affected, and how, is unclear to me. AFAIK (and I don't know much at all about this) chips don't age in the sense that they are more prone to fail as they get older, right? If someone can explain this, I'd love to learn more about it.