Top three calculators ?

[Raymond Del Tondo]

Actually at some time a few years ago, an era ended, at least for me.
Therefore my current favourite three HP calculators are not exactly the same as back then.

- HP-41CX
- HP Prime
- HP 30b

A few years ago I never thought that things like the Prime
or 30b would find their way into my home again.

I wrote some posts about the 30b when it was relatively new,
and the points of criticism about the ergonomics are still valid.

But: The 30b is the cheapest RPN capable HP calc with nice keyboard feedback,
and (after some accomodation) nice RPN user interface.
Everything on the 30b is better than on the 20b,
if you ignore the awful silver color of the 30b;-)

From an ergonomic point of view, the HP 32S is much better than the 30b.
But the 30b has a much better display contrast,

I ignored the Prime since my "lifetime" project was the HP 48 GX.
But in late 2022, I aquired a really cheap Prime G1 through eBay.
The Prime hardware and features are what many of us wanted
all those decades ago.

The Prime built-in RPN stack is awful, not worth the effort.
But the PPL allows (with some damn restrictions) to customize the user interface.
And so I did, using the RPN calc from Jacob Wall as base,
my own RPN stack environment, with switchable font sizes.