Advice to buy an HP

[bshoring]

(04-16-2015 01:57 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  

(04-16-2015 01:21 PM)TASP Wrote:  I realize the rest of the speed demons here will hate this, but the fluttering of the LED display while the 80 chugs and snorts it's way thru problems is fun. The age of the thing and it's date arithmetic functions are interesting too. The 'wonky' enter button that says 'SAVE ^' is another source of amusement with every press.

Also, just a luck of the draw thing, the one that wound up in my hands looks pristine, who ever had it before took the batteries out apparently a week after buying it and left it in his office drawer ever since.

The top row of keys, "n i PMT PV FV" is amazing too. I don't have much need of financial functions, but even I can appreciate just how bloody brilliant that row of keys is and how the software works. And how many subsequent calculators have those keys on them ?? Heck, even the PPCROM emulates that feature!

I think it's age, durability, good looks, and out of the gate advanced design just make it a really neat thing to have around and use. It feels good in my hand as has the right amount of 'heft'. Amazing, HP's second handheld calculator still stands as a primer for everyone else making calculators to this day.

Of my 3 oldies, the 35, 45, and 80, it was the only one that came with a charger, and it is keeping all 3 of them working too. Just another little bonus.

Wow, I never paid any attention to the HP-80 before, but I admire its simplicity and no-frills approach. Thanks for bringing this up.

Does your HP-80 also have the LED fluttering with the square root and x^y functions, while the HP-35 does not? An emulator I have for the HP-80 has the fluttering for those functions, as well as the financial functions. I think it's kind of fun. What impresses me is how HP managed to pack so many financial functions into such an early machine with limited ROM & RAM. Since it has no financial registers (even the HP-70 has them), it has to perform all the financial work using only the 4 registers of the stack, plus the two internal "scratch" registers, A & B. I believe for solving for i (interest rate) which must use Newton's Method, the single storage register is also used.

Fascinating machine.

Bob