New HP-50G owner and new to the forums

[javimm]

Well, I picked the calc up yesterday.

I have a bit of a bittersweet feeling about it. Software wise is all that I wanted my 48 to be. It's blazing fast, it already has in its firmware a lot of the functionality that I had to supply to my 48 via libs (Erable, metakernel, fast EQW, MATRIXW, good text editor). This leaves a lot of free memory on the calc that I didn't have before, even with two memory cards. The SD option is fantastic, no more slow Xmodem transfers... Overall, fantastic software wise. There's very little here that I can complain about.

Now the ugly side. Construction is MILES away from the 48. I doubt the 50G will be able to withstand the heavy use I gave to my 48 during 20 years. Plastic is thinner, lighter and just feels cheaper to the touch.
The keyboard is not bad, much better than the one in the 35S, but doesn't feel nearly as strong as the one in the 48. It feels harder to the touch but weaker at the same time, if that makes sense. By the way, the person who decided to put the Enter key there and reduce it's size, should be sent to jail. ¿What were they thinking?. It's just not the location of the key; it's its small size and the displaced +,*,- and / keys.

My 50g rattles a bit when shaken, I've read that the internal speaker is fixed with tape (What the...???) and can become loose. After my disasterous try opening the 48, I don't feel like opening this to fix the problem, althouhg it seems pretty easy.

That's my short review. I wish HP could produce this model with the quality of yesteryear, but this ain't gonna happen.