HP Releases New RPN Scientific Calculator

majid writes "HP just announced a new calculator, the HP 33S. It supports RPN and algebraic notation, and sports a funky V-shaped design. I don't think it looks as nice as the 33SII it is supposed to replace, and it seems to have rubber keys instead of the wonderful hard plastic keys on older HP calculators, but it's nice to have a new RPN scientific calculator that does not have the intimidating learning (and remembering) curve of the 48 or 49 series. This one just might join my trusty 15C ... The User's manual PDF is available courtesy of Amazon, where it is apparently already No. 85 on the best-selling list."

Comments

Good for basic math

[thedogcow]

This calculator good for basic math and people in non-engineering majors.

The Ti92 (or Ti89 if you don't want the qwerty keyboard) is still the best route to go for higher-level mathematics (Calculus etc) ... however it has its limitations. I am taking Partial Differential Equations this summer and I don't think any calculator can help me get the answer quick and easy.

Re:Good for basic math

[cybermace5]

That was his point, dude. He didn't say he wanted a calculator to do PDE for him, he said that they couldn't. His point was that there are some things that calculators can't do. One of them being manhandling symbolic formulas.

And yet you acted like he was complaining about not being able to use a calculator. Please read the whole comment before firing off a kneejerk reaction.

Re:algebraic notation

[Leffe]

algebraic: 2 + 1
RPN: 2 1 +

Complaints.

[eddy]

There's been some complaints on the HP newsgroup about a near invisible decimal dot in the display, IIRC. Something to look out for.

And people, this isn't a replacement for the graphing calculators, it's meant to be a competent calculator for people who don't need graphing, and it can be used on tests where the HP49G+ and such are often forbidden.

Re:Complaints.

[eddy]

I'm not sure why you're replying to me, but yes, the HP calculator division isn't it's former self.

First of all, the HP49G+ use a 75MHZ ARM920T processor on which the Saturn and OS is emulated. The OS is now much faster than the 48-series -- and there's been progress on hacking around the emulation to run software on the underlying ARM directly. Bypassing the emulation makes for potentially very fast software indeed. This potential however is very cool, and as soon as they figure out how to control the display without going over the emulated OS, I can see there being a complete new OS written for it.

No, the problem with the new HPs are that they're made in China (and all the implications of thatt). There's been problems with the keyboard. Early HP49G+ have a 'hollow sounding' keyboard which sometimes misses keys. That's very bad if you're using the calculator a lot. I've got one of the older models myself and it's quite irritating. Even so, I wouldn't want to replace it with a non-RPN calculator. I love my HP :-)

Newer revisions of the hardware (SN 41x..., IIRC) are said to be a little better, but some hardcore fans remain unconvinced.

Re:Complaints.

[morcheeba]

4-bit bus

Actually, the Saturn processor is a lot more complicated than that. Just about everything in it is a different size:

- 4-bit addressable word size
- variable instruction sizes (very cisc)
- 20-bit address
- four 64-bit registers that can be addressed in a number of ways (example: you can manipulate just the exponent portion of the register, not the mantissa)
- Physically, the HP48 interfaced to 8-bit-wide memory, but this is invisible to the programmer

I'd be tempted to call it a 64-bit processor because that's the register size, but that is a generalization. It is fundamently a low-power design specifically for BCD math.

Re:Complaints.

[Foolhardy]

According to the spec sheet for the new 33s that the story is about, it in fact DOES use a 6502 . Note CPU.

Re:*calc are dying

[juhaz]

Aside from (usually) much more convenient buttons on real calculator mentioned by others, good luck trying to use your newfangled PDA on exam, what's next, why not use a laptop? You can get much better mathematics software for that and it's loads faster than a PDA can offer. Hey it's got this umpteen megapixel beatiful 32-bit tft as well!

Nah, it's you who can't see it, calculators are not going anywhere.

HP still making calcuators?

[jpmkm]

I seem to recall an announcement a while back saying that HP was getting out of the calculator business. Since then they have released two new calculators(HP49G+ and then this one). What's up? I love HP calcs though. I have an old HP41CV that I have thought about selling on ebay(they are worth quite a bit now) but I think I'm going to keep it. RPN is the best idea ever.

Re:Funny, was talking about this yesterday

[vegetablespork]

Is this true everywhere? Has the HP calculator series been relegated to the trash heap? If so, how did HP allow itself to bungle this so badly?

Two words:

Carly. Fiorina.

enlarged image

[Janek Kozicki]

the enlarged image didn't work for me (don't know why). but at last I managed to get it. In case some of you had similar problems - here it is:

http://www.hp.com/calculators/images/33s_350x350.j pg

Re:algebraic notation

[Anonymous Coward]

algebraic : 2 + 1 =
RPN: 2 [ENTER] 1 +

Re:Funny, was talking about this yesterday

[CylanR77]

This is really just based on my observation, but I'd have to say that the reason why HP calculators are almost unheard of these days [or rather, why TI's calculators are everywhere] is because that's what middle schools and high schools buy to sell to their students. I belive that the schools get a bit of a discount, buying in bulk and being educational institutions. I think that the bottom line is that early on, the schools get TI calculators for their students.

This way, the teachers and students are more used to using one brand/model of calculator, and once there's a bit of inertia in one direction, it's tougher to change things to the other direction.

I can't really imagine a school system recommending a calculator other than the TI-83+ for their math classes, mainly because they're easy to get, easy to find someone who knows how to use it, and easy to see that every other school system uses it.

Corrections....

[Anonymous Coward]

It replaces the 32SII, not the 33SII....

NCEES's calculator bans on FE, PE

[Noksagt]

The NCEES just banned the HP48/49 from their popular engineering exams. People were using them to steal exam questions and/or to cheat by transmitting to one another. The HP33s is the ONLY RPN calculator that is explicitly approved. They are seriously considering switching to only allowing calculators that have been explicitly approved, but say they want to keep the list short (so may exclude the great vintage RPN calcs like the 15c). There was a HUGE rush to get the 33s in time for the April exam a week or two ago & they were being sold on ebay for hundreds of dollars.

OpenRPN Project

[Noksagt]

Good time to plug OpenRPN, a project to develop a series of open hardware RPN calculators. It just started, so don't expect learning TOO much from it (they still have some problems with their forums, so please be gentle with the server), but if you can help out please do so!

Re:15C Still rules for programmers

[majid]

You mean the 16C. The 15C is a scientific programmable calculator that does not have a hex mode.

Re:RPN for Cluebies?

[Noksagt]

The wikipedia article is pretty good on this. But a short summary of benefits:

1. Uses less calculator memory, as it doesn't have to parse parenthesis and algebraic BS.
2. Could be entered more quickly because you don't use parenthesis and the like (shorter expressions because you operate on the stack)
3. The stack facilitates correct entry--easy to check parts of an expresion & you won't get lost in the ()s
4. You will never get lost in which set of () you're in.

Re:RPN!

[Cryptnotic]

It's faster because you never need to type parentheses.

Example:

4239 * (12382 + 147324) + 2342

in RPN, you would type:

4239 [enter] 12382 [enter] 147324 [+] [*] 2342 [+]

No parens to balance, plus you can see all of the intermediate values (e.g., the result of 12382 + 147324) as you go.

HP Calculator Emulator for PalmOS

[pigpogm]

If you want to emulate the 48SX, 48GX, and 49G calcs on your Palm...

http://power48.mobilevoodoo.com

They look fantastic - an impressive graphics job, and look like they work well to me. Sadly, I'm just a wannabe geek hanging around slashdot to look cool, so I don't actually follow a fraction of what they do.

How sad is that?

Re:Calculators are here to stay

[KDan]

So what use are calculators in schools when students could be using Mathematica (or any other mathematical software of their choice) on their laptops?

I'm merely a physicist turned software engineer, so please forgive my audacity and insolence in reminding you that laptops are not allowed in exams.

Daniel

Re:Calculators are here to stay

[RobertFisher]

I'm a computational astrophysicist, so my main tools are computers. ;-)

But more generally, computers are nearly universally present in all scientific settings. Observers no longer gaze through the eyepiece of a telescope; they sit in a control room in front of a computer. (Observers who use Hubble, Chandra, or Spitzer, of course, never leave their computer in their office.) Similarly, few experiments generate reams of paper rolls of data anymore; almost all experimetnalists use a computer in some fashion to generate and analyze their results.

All of this begs the question... if in nearly any scientific setting you have a high-powered computer sitting right in front of you on your desk, why on Earth would you choose to use a hand-held calculator instead?

Bob

Re:Calculators are here to stay

[billcopc]

As a jobless genius, I no longer find any use for hand-held calculators whatsoever. If I find the need to do a detailed numerical computation while working, I simply wake from my dream and remember I'm still just a jobless genius living in a basement, and besides, I don't even HAVE a calculator anymore.

Re:algebraic notation

[Joseph Lam]

just to show the efficiency of RPN for lengthy calculation:

algebraic : (2 + 1) * (4 + 3) + 5 =
(14 key strokes)

RPN: 2 [ENTER] 1 + 4 [ENTER] 3 + * 5 +
(11 key strokes)