What's your favorite calculator?

ArcanaNoir

What's your favorite calculator and why?

Dembadon

I've used that calculator since middle school. I actually don't use calculators in my math courses anymore, but it works just fine for my other science needs.

lisab

I bought a Sharp Scientific calculator when I started college decades ago. I moved up to programmable types, various HPs with the reverse Polish notation, and fancy graphing ones.

Now at work I use the very same Sharp I bought so long ago...sigh, first love .

Ben Niehoff

Nearly all the math I do now doesn't involve numbers.

Mech_Engineer

My good old circa 1997 TI-89 is always close at hand. On-board unti-aware calculation and symbolic differentiation/integration is a must! Anything more complex than that, and I make a MathCAD sheet.

Jack21222

TI-89 here as well.

ArcanaNoir

You'd think they'd have improved these in the last decade... Where's my backlit screen? Come ON.... Features people! It's time for features!

QuarkCharmer

In all fairness, I would prefer something reliable with a HUGE battery life. Back-lighting comes at a price.

I am a pretty big fan of this little gem as well (as I see most here are):


I hear that the HP's are much better if you can adjust to the "RPN" format (whatever that is). Perhaps I will try it out one day, but as a poor student, I chose to stick with what is reliable and cost effective. My older 89 (from like 1999 or something) broke, and I find that this newer model, though a bit thicker, is much faster at calculations and graphing. It doesn't need to "think" nearly as long.

Willowz

My feelings about the TI-89 Titanium:

lisab

Reverse Polish Notation .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation

hotvette

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for my very first calculator - an HP35 I purchased in 1973 for $395. That was a huge amount of money back then but well worth it.

Attached Thumbnails

 

QuarkCharmer

Sounds just as confusing as I am led to believe lol.

Aelo

I was sorely tempted to post a photo of a Curta mechanical calculator. I'd love to get the chance to play with one of those.

I'm currently quite fond of my TI-84 PSE. Its feet have started falling off, but I'm not one to judge.

jtbell

At work (school) I use a TI-84 because most of our students have something similar, and I can show them how to do stuff on it. But I'm really an HP fan, ever since the HP-21 that I bought 36 years ago when I started grad school. On the desk next to me right now, at home, is an HP-11C that I bought probably about 25 years ago. It's still going strong, and I use it for all my calculations at home.

Proton Soup

my first HP calculator when i went to engineering school was the HP-15C (looks like the 11C above). one of the things i really liked about it was the programming was simple, just a recording of keystrokes. my next, was the HP-48SX, but i never really did get into any expansion or programming with it, beyond simple one-off programs. so the same love wasn't quite there with the 48, despite higher utility. i think if it had been about 10X faster and came shipped with a serial cable and software i would have bonded better with it.

Ivan92

The best calculator ever!

zomgwtf

I like the TI-89s but really I rarely use it and when I do I could just use the one that I have downloaded onto my computer.

The calculator I use all the time is a casio fx-991MS



I can do everything I need to on it and what made me originally love it was that it solves any polynomial. In grade 11 and 12 it saved my butt a couple times when I was using it to check my final answers (is that cheating?? haha)