How and why do you use your HP calc?

[Arno K]

I usually use some kind of calculator as I own a helping school and teach maths and physics there, mostly I take one of the Casios (fx-991 plus) or whatever the pupil uses at school to show him or her how to perform the necessary steps on it, for sketching graphs and calculus stuff I take out my Prime on which I also have some self-written programs for special problems and for fun I now own a 50g.
My calculator history in fact began when I was bored, I noticed a Ti57 in a bookstore in 1977 and bought it, learned to program it and one year later began studying Maths and Physics. Since thet days I always owned programmable calcs, TI 58C, Casio PB100 (a crippled fx700) and a Sharp PC 1401 taught me Basic and first steps in Assembler, then there was a graphing one from Casio which I didn't own very long as the programming capabilities were too restricted, another Sharp, PC 1475 with more memory and double precision, then my first HP, a 28c, when the battery latch broke it was followed by a 48, both made fun, I learned RPL and really liked it. Nevertheless I traded it for a TI92 which later was expanded by the PLUS-module, a nice calculator, way too clumbsy, but assembler was fun here as I had learned 68000 Assembler for my Atari Mega ST. Then there was a HP49, I did not like the keys, so I sold and bought a 49G+, too bad that after some years two of its keys broke, I had learned a bit of SRPL on it and still have it in its pouch. After a break in using calculators, I had a lot of other things to do, I somewhere saw a picture of the Prime and its capabilities were impressing and so I bought it, the data sheet said something about RPN which I identified with RPL-programming on it, that was false, but it is a really good calculator. Since these days I am an active user of this forum and so finally came to the conclusion that I needed a 50g to play with it, at the moment I am brushing up my RPL.
Arno