HP Forum Archive 17

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Got the HP35s from Samson cables Message #1 Posted by Stefan K. on 5 Oct 2007, 2:36 a.m. I hope this isn't annoying too much for US residents, but maybe some EU citizens are still thinking about getting this beauty: - Shipping to Austria took about 2.5 weeks (with cheapest shipping option). - For some odd reason it was sent from the US (instead the EU), so I had to pay taxes (and customs was responsible for a couple of days delay). - Within a couple of hours I got a reply from Samson that they'll refund the extra expenses. IMO Samson's customer support is much better than your average (US or international) company, I already feared to go through endless hassles and email conversations. Now to the calculator itself (and my 2 cents): - I like it, the case really makes the difference (compared with the "cheap" leatherettes included with eg. the 32s). - Why can't I use SQRT on negative (or complex) numbers? - A calculator with a printed user manual (instead of an instruction sheet)! Not everything in the world is going worse. For me it was definitely worth the buy. Stefan

Re: Got the HP35s from Samson cables Message #2 Posted by Walter B on 5 Oct 2007, 2:51 a.m., in response to message #1 by Stefan K. Hallo Stefan, welcome to the club! Your SQRT-of-negative-question was discussed here already, so please check earlier posts. HTH, Walter

Re: Got the HP35s from Samson cables Message #3 Posted by Karl Schneider on 5 Oct 2007, 5:20 p.m., in response to message #1 by Stefan K. Hi, Stefan -- Here's one of the "earlier posts" that Walter referred to: http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/archv017.cgi?read=119576#119576 The post does address the questions you asked, although the presentation is a bit formal. The quick answer is as follows: square root of a negative-real or complex-valued argument was never supported in the models whose algorithms served as the basis of the HP-35s (HP-32S, HP-32SII, HP-33s). -- KS

Re: Got the HP35s from Samson cables Message #4 Posted by Stefan K. on 7 Oct 2007, 3:16 p.m., in response to message #3 by Karl Schneider Hi, thanks for the link. I was following the forum, so I already knew about this "problem". My remark was less a question, more a complaint. With a complex valued y^x, some functions become obsolete (sin, cos, sinh, cosh, sqr, sqrt, exp, 10^x, and so on). So why do we have keys for them - to make life easier. I donīt know much about the internals, but would it be hard to implement some operator overloading? So for real arguments the calculator behaves like it does now (and uses the same algorithms), and for complex numbers we get the complex function? At leastfrom my point of view (and I am only a user) this would make sense. Stefan

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