Calculators

Lain, what is your preferred calculator of choice? I realize this may come off a bit odd since we're in the 21st century and nobody really uses dedicated calculators anymore besides high school kids, but I still use mine quite often. My favorite one is probably my Casio FX-9750GII, for two reasons. One, it's not a TI. Two, it uses a SuperH processor and as a result of thay you can make some pretty cool programs for it. I used to just write simple stuff to automate equations and formulas back in high school, but as time went on I realized that it's a lot more powerful than that. Currently my most complex program is a simple little pong game, which although underwhelming it's still pretty cool. I've heard those HP calculators are still really popular in engineering fields with RPN and stuff, and I'm hoping to acquire an HP-1X series soon. Anyway, just curious to hear your thoughts.

>>56065 I like the HP50-G, RPN, and even own one, but the problem is the industry is predatory. The calculators are still selling at the same full price for more than a decade because they are needed only to limit capabilities children have access too. Not being subject to those constraints anymore (for more than a decade), means that using a calculator is a bad idea. Computer Algebra Systems are better. I have used maxima, and I am trying to switch to Sympy/Scipy suite but I still find myself using wolfram alpha. I would prefer children being taught to use python, if just the interpreter without a CAS beyond the math module, because it would be a stepping stone to a wide variety of useful places. Which is exactly why I don't want to invest more time in the 50G. On my phone , I occasionally use an HP-42 emulation that I read the manual on years ago. I should problem install a python interpreter and use that instead.

I used the HP48SX and later the HP48G. I have the manuals, the quick manuals, and the carrying cases. I used to carry them with me, when I would leave the house more often, but it's been years. I once dropped it on concrete, but of course it was fine. It was nice having access to unit conversion programs, alarms, and other nice things. I never programmed it much, but I may write a tiny RPL program soon. I never did get the Super CHIP-8 program for it, but the some of its instructions are implemented incorrectly anyway, so only basic software would be able to run on it, if that. I also have an HP50G, but I've never really used it. I printed its huge manual and tried to bind it, but gave up, and now I've had the mass of paper in my room for years, never to be used. They should've printed the damn thing for me, so I could've purchased it. I also have an Elektronika MK-61, but it's just a novelty.

I have an HP-48GX which I found in some pawn shop. I really like it a lot, though I'm only starting to use it as I study physics. I think it's really comfy. It's obviously underpowered for today's standards and it takes a while to plot a function or solve a differential equation. But I still find it a lot more convenient for study than, say, trying to figure out something like octave or macsyma.

>>56070 I also used an HP 50G back in my engineering days, I still have it somewhere on my parents house, but I moved overseas and did not bring it. Nowadays I use an emulator of it on Android which is quite good, but for most CAS work I prefer Wolfram Mathematica on PC.I wish I could move to some free software solution, but I could not find anything as intuitive as Mathematica so far.

Im on the ti bandwaggon, i go lots of them, but the ti-83 is still the classic. Also got a few hp and casios. I dont really use them however.

Due to being a massive racket encouraging regional monopolies because of classroom requirements, calculators are too disgustingly expensive for me to have tried out very many different ones. So I simply prefer what I've always known, a TI-83 Plus.

I know it's not as extensible as the newer models, but I still remember reading my dad's TI-83 Plus instruction manual cover to cover as a kid and realizing that I could assign random numbers to all the letter variables to get a "string manipulation" system that could check if an input "string" was "equal" (anagrams notwithstanding) to an expected value, and made a little quiz game out of that.

Either the Casio FX-115ES Plus, or the TI-83 Plus Both due to familiarity more than anything else