Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

tzs·

HP has official HP calculator apps on the iOS app store. There's a 12c for $15:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hp-12c-financial-calculator/i...

A 12c Platinum for $20:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hp-12c-platinum-financial/id3...

Finally, a 15c for $30:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hp-15c-scientific-calculator/...

View on HN

Emulation is a good idea. HP spent a huge amount of resources to try to ensure their calculators return the best possible numeric results. It is an issue many people forget about, for example, compare the statistical function accuracy of Excel vs R or Gnumeric.

As an example in the calculator world, I like free42 and had it installed on my Palm. However, I don't have the same confidence in it as I have in my HP-48 or my HP-35s. If I'm doing engineering calculations then I really prefer to use a real HP calculator or an emulated one using original firmware.

One of the sad things though is that hp has really declined in quality calculators, if you look around you'll find quite a few problems regarding accuracy in the new 35s close to critical values. (Though they may have updated the software version since my purchase a few years ago)

I do like my giant hp50g for anything that doesn't need matlab though, and the 35s is still pretty good despite its errors (especially since I know where the errors exist).

I use the 12C emulator and love it. Much cheaper than buying one for $65. Learning RPN changed the way I program, which is crazy because it takes 15 minutes to learn at most.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com