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in fact I'm making an RPN calculator for PalmOS if anyone is interested in helping

What's wrong with RPN?

This one $15 shareware program is what keeps me firmly on PalmOS. I've tried other RPN calculators, but they don't show me the stack and let me drag entries around like RPN does.

Spend your money on a PalmOS PDA and then get Power 48 which emulates the Saturn CPU and runs the HP calc ROMs, it's free and GPL'ed. Though if you can do with something simplier I've been using RPN as others have said, for years (though it's now $18).

Depending on how hard you work your calculator, you might do better to get a PDA and run a calculator program on it. If you bang on your calculator keys for hours, get a real calculator.

I use Palm PDAs (my current one is a Tungsten T) and I run a program called RPN on it. It's programmable and it has graphing, but I haven't used those features; but as a general-purpose RPN calculator, it's kept me happy.

What I really want is something similar to Palm RPN that is programmable in Python.

Anyway, the best thing about this is that I always have it with me. I used to have an HP calculator, but it was never handy when I wanted it.

steveha

If you have a PalmPilot, you might consider RPN. Given your stated requirements, it may not be powerful enough, but it's served me well.

Schwab

• AvantGo -- Great for reading the news when you're bored to death at a meeting.
• Date Book -- syncs with my shared calendar. I forget how I lived without this.
• Memo Pad -- less messy than Sticky Notes
• Calculator -- I use RPN , for people that never got over their first HP calculator.

• Address book -- I don't trust the security
• Mail -- can't deal with my inbox on that small screen. Also, wireless replication to my company's email system is probably hopeless (just don't ask).
• Maps -- if somebody out there can read black-on-silver road maps at that resolution, my hat's off to you.
• M-commerce -- I've never felt the urge to buy stock/books/other goodies so strongly it couldn't wait until I got back to my desk. Or even tomorrow.
• eBooks -- I tried Stephen King's "Riding the Bullet". Not the worst experience I've ever had, but call me back when the screens are better.

• RPN 2.46 is a freeware RPN calc for PalmOS
• MathU from creativecreek.com is a $20 program which is basically an HP 15C emulator
• Financial calculator from landware.com is a $30 calc app that has the financial stuff built-in from the 12C built-in as well
• RPN an $18 shareware RPN calculator for Palm with scripting and nice features as well

There is a comparison page on geekazoid about various Palm calculators, RPN and otherwise.

It should be a good indication of the excellent design and utilty of the HP calculators that it has been so imitated... Of course, some of that has to do with the sturdy hardware- it is quite remarkable what can be done to an HP calc and still have it work perfectly...

Yes, a Palm makes a good replacement.

There are several calculators you can get. I have had RPN, one of the best ones, for years. The latest version of RPN has graphing features!

One person noted screen real-estate limitations. RPN works around these by having two key areas: the bottom area has the most commonly-used keys, and always looks the same; the top area has remappable keys. There is a pick-list you use to choose which function set the top keys will be right now. Doing metric conversions? Choose the conversions keyset. Doing stats? Choose the statistical functions keyset. Have some weird project? Define your own keyset.

There are situations where a good HP calculator is exactly what you want... but I always have my Visor Deluxe with me anyway, so I pretty much always use it when I want a calculator.

steveha

Who needs a hardware add-on for calculator capability? As long as the heaviest-duty thing you want is static 2d graphs, there's no need for a math coprocessor. There are already over 100 calculator apps available for palmOS, including Mathgraph and Hgraph for graphing, and the old standby RPN for programmability and script availability.