25 Stat summations

[Steve Simpkin]

(08-30-2022 02:13 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  Thanks for the detailed comparison Steve, I did not realize the 57 had so many superior features. I'll admit that even if I did know, I still would have gone with the HP-25 as I did then, as the feel, quality and confidence in use were more important features for me than most of these programming improvments. Still, it does stack up well looking back on it.

Your comments about the different style manuals and TI's broader everyday use examples is also quite interesting. I don't know if they reasoned that the lower cost of the device would enable it to be in the hands of a much broader, and less technically-focused set of users, or if this was a deliberate move to intentionally position it for use by this broader base. Whatever the actual truth, I'm sure the later TI marketing revisionists claimed it was the latter, and indeed it did open up their use to a much broader (and larger!) set of users.

Thanks for enabling this different perspective.

Bob, I fully agree. I bought my HP-25 in June 1977 and used it as my sole calculator for almost 10 years, through most of High School, College and 2 years at my first engineering job. By the time I replaced it with an HP-11C around early 1987, the world had long moved away from rechargeable battery LED calculators. It just did everything I needed during that time (and still works great!). After previously using algebraic calculators for a time (as it was all I could afford), transitioning to RPN seemed so natural to me that I never went back. And don't get me started on the fantastic style and quality of those early HP calculator manuals.
While I would not have traded my HP-25 for even the vastly feature-superior TI-58 (which sold for the same $100 street price as the HP-25 in late 1977), I am enjoying going through the TI manuals now and learning about how they work.

As for the differences in manual styles, I suspect TI was going for the educational market and used educators to help develop the informal documentation style. The following credit page from the TI-57 manual hints at this association as well.