So HP calculators have been … well not frequent. And from the perspective of a casual calculator user HP might as well not exist. If you wanna buy a new useful scientific calculator it’s TI or Casio and maybe sharp. However with the recent announcement that there would be a collectors edition re-release of the HP 15c it looks like the new owners of the HP calculator brand do care! Well at least a bit. So what do you think they will do next? Do you believe HP still has a great calculator in them? What would be your dream HP calculator?
I’m not asking facetiously, what could a new calculator do better? I had one of those treasured 2000s-era TI- something’s graphing calculators. But left it with my ex because her kids were getting older. I was like, the kids will laugh but might need it for an SAT thing.
Are the graphing calculators these days competitive with average smartphones? Why can’t I get a smartphone that is more like a graphing calculator?
Well i personally was more thinking non-graphing calculators. I personally feel once i want graphs and complex programs I’m better off using a laptop. I feel like when comparing the HP prime smartphone app and the real HP prime, then there is something to having physical buttons that does help.
I’m not really a numbers guy, but tactile buttons for alphabets in an interface is also super cool. Aka mechanical keyboards or whatever.
I miss the slide-out keyboard on my last non-smart phone (probably back in 2009 or so).
Purely from an exam perspectives, calculators might be allowed but phones are not?
Never understood that either. I was not clever enough to program my calculator very much. But some of those calculators can run Doom.
I personally loved the look of the HP 35s. Also the 35s had the ability to store algebraic formulas which neither the Casio fx-991CW nor the TI 30/36X Pro can. If HP could make an actually really good 35s successor that would be great. With fewer bugs and a handful of more features and maybe even with an optional multi line textbook style display? If it had a big dot matrix display you could have a large stack for RPN in addition to a textbook style mode with persistent history. The 35s is rather power hungry so it that continues to be a problem for HP calcs then why not have a USB-C rechargeable battery in it? And if it already has a USB port then it would be cool if one could export and import programs and formulas! I can always dream…
I think HP recently came out with the “HP15C Collectors Edition”. It’s not HP but Swiss Micros makes some pretty cool machines. I have a DM41L, a clone of the venerable HP41C.
I really like the RPN input of the HP calculators. My HP48SX has died, but I have a HP35s, and the Swiss Micros DM32 & DM42.
I saw a video on youtube recently about how various algebraic input calculators handle PEDMAS/PEJDMAS order of operations:
On an RPN calculator, this is all moot, since RPN is unambiguous and the calculator simply executes the operators in the order you enter them.
