HP Prime or HP 50g

[Tim Wessman]

Quote:Looking over the list of responses (so far), it looks like there could be a greater number of engineers, than students, who have purchased the Prime. While this may not be generally true, the idea that the Prime was targeted at the educational market, maybe missed the reality target?

I think you are seeing a very large self selection bias.


To put in my response here, it really depends on what kind of user you are and what you want from the unit.

The 48 series was designed with the concept that you are a scientist or engineer who needs a scratchpad problem solving tool. It assumed you knew math and were GOING to be programming it with the tools you need for your workflow. What this user needs is a collection of flexible commands that can be combined in any which way in order to accomplish what is desired. There are often many, many different ways to accomplish something.

Prime was designed primarily for users who may not ever open the manual, who are in the process of learning math, and who most likely will never program the calculator. Prime is much more consistent from a UI perspective (learn one application, all the others function similarly), but currently has issues that are primarily centered around having two different parsers (one in home that is totally under HP's control and behaves much like prior HP calculators - with the exception that objects MUST exist as a name at parse time - and then the CAS parser which was designed by the CAS author). When you try to interact between them, the behavior is not consistent.


It is true that prime is primarily targeted at a different market segment. That does not mean it will not function in engineering applications or work for "higher" users, but depending on what your needs are it may not meet them.

There are plenty of things that prime will do that are far beyond what the 50g can. For example, the statistics are much, much better (48 series was really weak in this area), the graphing is much more capable when comparing similar areas (however Prime still is missing some equivalent capabilities like 3D graphing for example), and the CAS on Prime can do much, much more then the 50g CAS and will continue to pull away.

The 50g is much more uniform when looking at the "command line" only because basically it was designed around that. You will have lower level programming, and the ability to poke into the system at will.


Long term, Prime may end up meeting most/all of the needs of the traditional 50g user as well. If some of those capabilities that Prime doesn't meet yet are important to you *at this moment* though, then I think you already have your answer. Prime is just getting stated, but the 50g is basically a 20 year old mature product with all quirks and limitations known.