NCEES calculators Message #16 Posted by Norris on 20 July 2004, 5:39 p.m., in response to message #15 by Ron Ross
I recently got a 33S for an NCEES PE exam. So far I am reasonably satisfied with it; it appears to be the best available choice for NCEES exam purposes. And I have not had any problems with the keyboard.
The 33S is certainly not flawless. The chevron keyboard is silly, the decimal point and the ENTER key are too small, the display contrast is not great, and the lack of variables and labels hinders programming.
But it has some important advantages as well:
(1) NCEES approval. NCEES has now explicitly banned the 39, 41, 48, and 49 series, as well as the 42S. The 28 series has not been explicitly banned, but it appears to be illegal based on its alphabetic keyboard and IR port. Even
old standbys like the 11C and 15C may be prohibited in the future; NCEES is seriously considering a ban on all calculators except for those with explicit NCEES approval. As of now, the only RPN calculators with such approval are the 32S, 32SII, and 33S.
(2) Large memory for equations. The 33S can't store too many separate programs, because it has relatively few labels and variables. But it can store a whole lot of complex equations, and for NCEES exam purposes, this is useful. For comparison, the time value of money equation alone eats up about 25% of the available memory on a 32SII.
The 33S is arguably the premier NCEES exam calculator on the market today; even algebraic users are buying it over TI or Casio models. HP ought to get some credit for introducing a model that successfully targets this market niche, although admittedly it is a relatively small one. Maybe they just got lucky.
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