Buyers remorse of HP 48

[Dave Britten]

The 48S certainly won't FEEL fast, largely because there's a lot of code powering the sophisticated object system, and the more complicated stack display and user interface. But if you compare the n-queens benchmark:

https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap...i?read=700

...you'll notice that the 48S runs a UserRPL n-queens in 00:01:19, whereas the 15C (one of the slowest programmable calculators HP ever made) takes 01:19:10, roughly 60 times as long. The 15C feels faster, largely because its input handling, stack handling, and data types (real numbers, matrix descriptors, optional complex stack) are all so much simpler.

So while the 48S won't feel as fast, largely because of longer pauses in responding to commands and updating the display, it's overall much faster under the hood. And the keyboard input is buffered, so you can happily type ahead of the calculator, and it will catch up just fine. Given the inconsistency of the typical user's typing speed, chances are it will keep pace with you. Where you'll feel it the worst are applications like the matrix writer or equation writer that are more dependent on seeing step-by-step visual feedback from the calculator with each keystroke.

Try it out for a bit, and if you're still having trouble warming up to it, consider getting a 48G instead. The CPU in those is twice as fast, and while this doesn't quite result in a 2x speed increase, the difference is still very significant. It also comes with a lot of other nice benefits, like a better equation writer, built in Solve/Equation Library, more powerful list processing, etc.