Re: 33s or 35s or casio fx-5800 for electronic engineering Message #19 Posted by bill platt on 22 Mar 2010, 7:25 p.m., in response to message #1 by Pablo P (Spain)
In the present context, anything but a computer is essentially a toy, or useful assistance to ad-hoc manual computation.
To that end, the 35s, the Casio, the 33s, old HP RPN machines, are all a crippling disadvantage. I'd steer clear of them if you are young and want to get ahead.
Those of us who are older fondly remember the days when we got our first 11c or 15c, or a bit older, when we got our 34c, 41C, or before that our 55, 65, 67 etc. In those days, when a real programmable computer such as the HP83 cost over $2200, and the Apple and the TRS 80 model II did not yet exist, these programmable calculators were fantastic!
Today, even the programmables, such as our venerable 41C, 42S, 15C, or the newer, more crippled 35S, are avocational curiosities, not effective tools, where programming is concerned. Computation, yes, portability, yes, programming, no.
Don't get me wrong: I own a number of RPN machines including the new ones. I use the 27s frequently for its solver. But I am "old" and therefore make use of legacy equipment because I already know it well and it works for me. But if there is a lot to do, I go to the computer.
Some other posts mention test-taking. This is really the crux of the matter. In your career, you are going to use a real computer to solve real programs. You will buy fantastic software for $1000 that can run circles around everything--circuit analysis, harmonic analysis, you name it. But for tests you need a calculator. To this end, find out what is *permissible* in your university. Find out what is permissible for your licensing examinations. It is likely that the 50G will be the only proper choice, if permitted. IT is *fully* programmable in RPL, SysRPL, Assembly language, and C! (If you like retro, buy a 48G series but you'll need cards and SpeedUI or Metakernel, and ALG48 or Erable for CAS--stuff I don't have expertise in).
In the US, we have to use the 33s or 35s for licensing tests as the 50G and all graphing calcs are banned. In the recent past, everybody used 48S and later 48G series on the tests. This dates all the way back to 1990!
35S has the disadvantages mentioned above: goofy quirky incomplete functional design for non base 10, and polar to rectangular. Trouble with trig close to 90 degrees. Some have problem with non registering keys. This also happens to some 33s. We are picky--we grew up on Voyagers, Spice, Classics, Woodstocks and Pioneers!
35S solver is better than 33s because of full editability of equations. 33S is way better in its layout for doing Base arithmetic, Polar to Rectangular and other stuff. Earlier ROM versions of the 33s had a bug in the Rectangular to Polar, as well as the Decimal Hours to H.MS maths! Only buy a newer one with the bigger decimal point. If you get an old one, you can write short, easy programs to do these functions correctly (I and a number of others here wrote programs that did this and you can find them and check them. At one point HP even made them a service release though I don't know it it is still up on their website).
I hope that helps.
[edited for spelling and grammar]
Edited: 22 Mar 2010, 10:06 p.m. after one or more responses were posted
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