My first newbie WP 34S question

[Nigel (UK)]

(05-17-2015 03:18 PM)Marcio Wrote:  

(01-09-2014 01:28 AM)Michael de Estrada Wrote:  I've just had my WP 34S for a day and already have a basic question. I tried to reproduce a simple program from my HP 42S with a 4 character label, but the WP 34S won't let me enter more than 3 characters before it moves to the next program step. Labels in the HP 42S can be up to 7 characters long, so I'm puzzled by this apparent restriction to only 3 characters. Hopefully I'm just missing something here.

Michael, in your opinion - although others are more than welcome to answer - how does the 34s compare against the 35s in terms of functionality? No need to consider the bugs of the latter.

Thank you.

Marcio

(Disclaimer: I'm not Michael, although I do have both a WP-34s and an HP-35s.)

Advantages of the HP-35s:

• Very good build quality (for mine, at least). The HP-30b feels cheaper and more plastic, although to me still acceptable.
• Two-line dot matrix display. I actually like the 7-segment main display on the WP-34s but a proper dot-matrix display would be better.
• More RAM on the HP-35s, although with no link to the external world I'm not sure I'd want to fill it.
• A numeric solver / integrator that does not require you to write a program.
  

In every other regard there is simply no comparison between the two machines. The WP-34s is so far ahead of the HP-35s in terms of built-in functions, programmability, linking to computers, and sheer flexibility that, in my view, there is no contest. Some randomly chosen highlights:

• Double precision mode. You want 35 decimal digits in your answers, or numbers with four-digit exponents? You got it.
• Complex number support. Pretty much every function on the WP-34s works with complex arguments. Complex numbers on the HP-35s are limited.
• Base arithmetic is powerful and convenient on the WP-34s. It isn't convenient on the HP-35s.
• A vast number of statistical distribution functions - there's nothing comparable on the HP-35s.
• An assembler that can be used to compile programs on a PC which can then be transferred either to an emulator or to a physical calculator, if you have a cable.
  

I know that you said not to mention the bugs, so I'll confine myself to a simple observation - bugs in the WP-34s (and there have been many of these) reported here are fixed within a couple of days at the outside, with new firmware ready to download. Bugs in the HP-35s, on the other hand ......!

Hope this helps.

Nigel (UK)