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Comment by Mister_Snuggles | Hacker News Reader

I have a Prime G2 and the RPN mode is just bad. It feels like it was an afterthought, and some things just don't seem to work properly in that mode.

My 48G+ is a much, much better RPN calculator.

The Prime G2 is also missing the equation library from the 48G+, which I found weird. Maybe they expect you to download what you need instead of using space in Flash for it.

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That's my take on the RPN mode but I like the algebraic mode and agree the 48 series is way better for RPN.

(My favorite HP calc was the 28, which I bought when the 48 was available. I discovered soon afterwards that a powerful spring will eventually break the battery door and it seemed to be a problem that no engineering student managed to solve.)

I use my 32S (lives on my monitor pedestal next to my 8087 chip) weekly. When I was doing floating point/integer bit twiddling the 'base' key was my deeply appreciated friend. But that was 36 years ago. RPN (if trained into the brain) really is faster and I love how the register transfers work.

Nowadays when I'm not feeling especially tactile I tend to reach for the Free42 Android app, which lives in a stack with the 32S. If I ever get bored, I'm going to relearn how to program them both. Next time around on the wheel, likely, if I have hands.

I've replaced the battery on the 32S twice. Suck on that, modernity.

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