NEW RPN CALCULATORS

Thread Starter

cirbaf

Joined Mar 3, 2021
2
I recently found NEW RPN CALCULATORS being made in Switzerland, based on various HP models, using ONLY RPN MODE, but with current HW, and updatable firmware and OS. The build quality is also great (IMHO, better than HP).

Just posting this as a LOVER of RPN, and seeing people wanting to find new models. Once you use RPN (NOT hard to learn), algebraic mode seems absolutely primitive.

No offense intended to any PERSON (just to algebraic mode ;-) and, of course, “to each his own”!

Is this the only company still making NEW RPN calculators (picking up the market that HP THREW AWAY)?

Thanks!

Pardon me also if I’ve written anything “wrong”, as this is my very first post in this forum (found by searching for “RPN”, which was found in a very old post/question).
 
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SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Still quite a few folks around here using RPN. However, a lot have gone from physical calculators to on-screen calculators/emulators and there are a lot of HP emulators available for even some of the older/obsolete calculators.
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
I gave up calculators almost entirely once I became an Excel jockey. If you've got Excel running 24/7 in front of you, reverting to a calculator feels like driving a car without a seatbelt on. You might do it in a pinch but it feels uncomfortable and you don't want to make a habit of it.
 

ApacheKid

Joined Jan 12, 2015
1,533
When I was a kid in the late 70s I was very much into electronics as a hobby and was quite focused on science in school, especially physics. Anyway back then the first electronic calculators were coming out, stuff you could see in high street stores and advertised in electronics magazines, this is when the term "electronic slide rule" began to appear.

As a result I spent a huge amount of time using calculators for electronics when I later went to college and was impressed by what was around back then.

My dream machine was a TI-59 but it was simply unaffordable as was the almost as good TI-58.

Anyway back to the present as I'm refreshing my knowledge of electronics and LC circuits and basic differential equations and complex numbers, I wanted a calculator that I could use, much as I would as a teen, sitting with pen n paper and working through examples or questions. I know we have computers now and they blow calculators away functionally, but it is so much more focused to work with a dedicated calculator, or stand at my white board calculator in hand working through some calculation.

Now I did get a pretty good HP 35s calculator about a year ago, didn't use it much until recently and it is very well built, the colored keys and key quality is as good as it gets with a calculator, but the display is not lit and is rather basic LCD screen, and often a result that has lots of digits must be "scrolled" to see the full value or to see the exponent and this started to annoy me.

So I now found - and got from ebay - a very good and newer HP, the HP Prime G2 calculator, which has recently been discontinued (rumors are that HP are getting out of the calculator business).

This is after a lot of investigation, it is rated better than the top range TI graphing calculator too.

Now I can do calculations and not have to scroll the result and the display is far better than the HP 35s.

So if you're in the market for a decent real calculator I'd definitely recommended the HP Prime G2, RPN is optional and fully supported.

(I didn't buy a new one from Amazon because some of the feedback comments indicate they are not really brand new, that's pretty bad so I went to ebay and got used but in as-new condition, my unit is fine and was 30 bucks less than Amazon).
 

Deleted member 115935

Joined Dec 31, 1969
0
I recently found NEW RPN CALCULATORS being made in Switzerland, based on various HP models, using ONLY RPN MODE, but with current HW, and updatable firmware and OS. The build quality is also great (IMHO, better than HP).

Just posting this as a LOVER of RPN, and seeing people wanting to find new models. Once you use RPN (NOT hard to learn), algebraic mode seems absolutely primitive.

No offense intended to any PERSON (just to algebraic mode ;-) and, of course, “to each his own”!

Is this the only company still making NEW RPN calculators (picking up the market that HP THREW AWAY)?

Thanks!

Pardon me also if I’ve written anything “wrong”, as this is my very first post in this forum (found by searching for “RPN”, which was found in a very old post/question).
how about a hint as to where to find said RPN calc.
 

Ian0

Joined Aug 7, 2020
9,667
I still use my HP-15C that I bought in 1985. I've got the emulator on my iPad, and I have Excel, but I still prefer the real HP-15C.
So how about a link to this new one?
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,281
If you've got Excel running 24/7 in front of you, reverting to a calculator feels like driving a car without a seatbelt on.
So if you have to do trig functions or logs or square-roots or numbers to a power you find it easier to use Excel than a calculator?
I'm pretty sure I can enter and do those functions on my virtual HP-42s a lot faster than entering them in Excel.
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,281
there are a lot of HP emulators available for even some of the older/obsolete calculators.
Yes, I use a virtual HP-42s calculator to replace my real one which developed a key contact problem, whose skin and display is an exact replica of the real device.
It performs all the functions, including programming with virtual keys, that the real device did.
 

AnalogKid

Joined Aug 1, 2013
10,986
I've got two (2) HP-35's, both in excellent condition. Both work. but only on the AC supply - can't find replacement battery packs.

ak
 
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wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
So if you have to do trig functions or logs or square-roots or numbers to a power you find it easier to use Excel than a calculator?
Absolutely, yes. For an isolated calculation it may be a toss up but so often one calculation turns into a what-if analysis, or a chart to explain the calculation, or the need to repeat a complex calculation in a documented way at some future time. I did all that far too many times to feel comfortable with a one-shot, undocumented number pulled out of thin air ... er, off a calculator screen.
 

ApacheKid

Joined Jan 12, 2015
1,533
Absolutely, yes. For an isolated calculation it may be a toss up but so often one calculation turns into a what-if analysis, or a chart to explain the calculation, or the need to repeat a complex calculation in a documented way at some future time. I did all that far too many times to feel comfortable with a one-shot, undocumented number pulled out of thin air ... er, off a calculator screen.
You could be right, fact is Excel is very very powerful and despite working as a software developer for decades on Windows, I am lame with Excel. If you have a good grasp of it I suspect it can do lots of stuff.

But you need a screen, keyboard, desk to see a decent sized spreadsheet, a calculator is portable, I can sit at a bench, couch, wander over to my whiteboard etc, for me that's the attraction.
 

upand_at_them

Joined May 15, 2010
940
I would have bought one of the HP RPN calculators when they reintroduced them a handful of years ago. But the price shot up to ridiculous and became a wealthy person's novelty instead of a modestly priced good calculator.
 
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