Vintage Graphing Calculators
Users share nostalgic stories about old HP and TI scientific/graphing calculators, praising their build quality, RPN input, longevity, and use in school and engineering.
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Any possibility of a higher-end TI or an old HP calculator?
Back in my school days, I found that TI's calculators had crap keyboards that inevitably failed at the worst moment. I decided to try an HP instead (HP-11C in my case), and I still have that calculator. It still works beautifully, but these days I just fire up Free42 on my phone.
Wouldn't it be easier to just get a HP calculator to begin with ?
My Hewlett Packard calculator from the 80s (HP28s)
HP 32SII scientific calculator. I had one in high school (not sure what happened to it), recently picked one up on ebay and haven't regretted it!
Though my TI-89 pocket calculator could do that in the 90s
I had a TI nSpire CX CAS in high school (like the 89 but with a color LCD screen and hackable with Lua and C - it runs Doom and GBA/NES emulators).In the final year of high school I was taking a class that did not require a graphing calculator, so I bought a TI 36X Pro, an advanced scientific calculator. It has excellent 'UI', tons of functionality, and the buttons feel great to type on (though after a long time they will still start to get mushy). I actually used to carry both
The HP-15c scientific calculator is a work of pure genius, beauty, and art along with its user manual. My dad has used his daily since ~1986 and demand was high enough to do a re-run in 2012 to make a few thousand more units at over $100 a pop. It uses RPN and can do matrices, calculus, statistics, and run programs. It is small, lightweight, excellent buttons, and the batteries last years. Engineers love them. No graphing, but it is amazing. TI is popular now, but at one point, only HP could be
At least one did,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_48_seriesCurrent generation still making engineering students happy, https://www.amazon.com/HP-G8X92AA-Prime-Graphing-Calculator/....
I honestly think Iām better at math / CS for going with an HP48G. RPN / stack based calculator. Drastically better construction. Luckily I went to a school district that allowed it.