17bii, 17bii+ and 30B, or "Why did the 30B die?"

[JimP]

I can't really do justice to the 17BII/17BII+ question, although I did plug the trig equations written for the former into the latter (Gerson Barbosa's) and these worked nicely (the L and G functions seem to be OK). The manual says it has >250 functions, but add to that the 7K memory useful for solver equations, and it can be turned into quite the versatile machine. Its simple layout and menu system is ergonomically underrated.

The 30b is a different beast. It boasts >250 functions too, but also has trig built in and some programmability. It is more powerful than the 12C in that regard. Why HP stopped building it is beyond me. Here in Australia (me too!) it's hard to find, but a couple of years ago I was able to get 2 for $20 US each! One I kept as a 30b and the other I converted to a WP34S, which has lots of probability distributions (more so than any other machine anywhere, I reckon, thanks to Paul, Walter, Marcus etc.) The latter also has some TVM capability with the programs loaded into Flash RAM. Although it would be interesting to see dedicated keys for TVM and other financial functions in any kind of future build/model.

The HP 27S, if you can find one, is an intriguing machine that does much, probably more, of what the 10BII+ does -- its a 'do everything' machine, but also has that 7K solver capability. Plenty of scientific functions plus TVM all built in. No bond calculations, or Black-Scholes, but that's doable with the solver.

Good luck with the studies!