Re: Good HP calculator for middle school child? Message #6 Posted by Martin Pinckney on 15 July 2011, 10:04 p.m., in response to message #5 by Don Shepherd
I would defer to Don on this, as he has first hand experience teaching at this level, which I don't.
What's I do have experience with is the HP-38g. It's actually the second HP I bought, after the 20s, with about 10 years in between.
Taken by itself, (with nothing to compare it to) it is an excellent calculator. Has a lot of built-in math functions, and the Solver. But it is slow, and memory-limited. I obtained a 48sx later. The 48 will do everything the 38 will, and about 4x more. Yet it seems faster (except in any graphics or Equation Writer mode), and seems to not run out of memory as fast. ???
So while I prefer the straight-laced styling of the 38g, I am sure that Marcus is right that the 39/40 would be a better choice.
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