Sorry Dave, but the real king for precision is still the HP-50g! It has many arbitrary precision libraries like www.hpcalc.org/details/5363 , which boasts more than 1000 digits mantissa, +/- 999999999 exponent for basic arithmetic functions, +/- 9999 exponent for the other functions, and 4 rounding modes! (out-of-the-box it is limited to a mere 12mant/3exp for the user and 15mant/5exp via SysRPL commands) :)
I can get arbitrary precision on my phone with termux and running a python interpreter. stackoverflow.com/questions/11522933/python-floating-point-arbitrary-precision-available
This is true but isn't the hp-50g crazy precision just a program? Would it not be possible to create something similar for the dm42? It has better hardware afterall. Out of the box the dm42 and the wp34s are the most precise calculators as far as I'm aware.
At the risk of giving away my age, my first-year chemistry Prof said, "A calculator is a device by which a freshman can determine the wrong answer to eight significant digits".
I think I had that prof. In my freshman year (1973) we were actually forbidden to use the new TI SR-10 4-function calculator on tests which cost me $99 at the time. We were also discouraged from using them on homework in favor of learning the more advanced functions of our slide rules. By my sophomore year the Eng. Dept. relented and allowed us to use calculators on tests but under controlled conditions. That year my roommate bought an HP-45 Scientific and when my old SR-10 got stolen I bought a new HP-25, which I still have, along with my old slide rule. Marvelous machines - can't do math without using RPN even now.
Sincerely Yours If you can remember the model number of your 1973 function calculator at least you can relax in the knowledge that you are not suffering from Alzheimer’s. Darn, where did I leave my slide rule?
This is definitely a "right to repair" friendly device: Open source firmware, off the shelf microprocessor and even instructions on how to take it apart written on the PCB!
7:51 - They need the *black solder mask* since you can see the PCB through the openings for the keys. One time when using a black solder mask is actually the right choice!
I have this calculator on my desk now, and I'm yelling things at the screen. :D You can see the full precision with "show" (second function of the decimal key). You can also subtract 9 from the result of the calculator forensics result to see the leftovers. :) You can upgrade the whole thing online, of course... but even better, you can download programs and save them. Hell, you can even change the pictures that come up when the calculator is off. I've uploaded a bunch of NASA-themed pictures on the DM42 forums. Too bad I only use it to convert between hex, decimal, and binary these days. Oh well. At least I can convert in STYLE!
@alysdexia There's no built-in functionality to do that, but it would be trivial to write a program. In fact, one may already exist. By the way, you can upload and download programs via USB.
As a mechanical engineer I accumulated a lot of old hp calculators over the years. I have hp 41CV, 15C, 28S, 20S, 48G, 49g+ calculators. I've also got an hp calculator IR thermal printer and paper. Plus a few more older hp calculators I can't remember right now. The older models with the "rocker" style keys were the best in my opinion. You could fly through a long calculation by just tapping the keys without having to watch the display to make sure you didn't get multiple digits with a single key press. Ti calculators with their "floating" keys had a bad habit of giving you a screen full of 7's or some other digit with a single key press. This was a problem Ti calculators had especially when they got older. The original hp "rocker" top-hinged keys with tactile feedback were great. Unfortunately, later and current hp calculator keys are ok but not as good as the original keys. I also had a Ti 59 with magnetic card read/writer and cradle with thermal printer with two optional math modules. I gave it away to one of our drafters back in the late 80s.
Same here. Sitting with my DM42 in my hand right now, remembered this video, came back to pay respects. I also got the DM15 but I unfortunately got the model with the spotty display - tried to 'bake it' (as per advice on the forum) and ruined it :(
I screw up badly on regular calculators, I really have to concentrate to use them, which means I still keep my HP28S handy at home and have a RPN calculator app installed on my phone. The combination of RPN and a stack is pure gold.
Always used an HP in college and dreaded when someone wanted to use my calc, you spent so much time just explaining it to them I gave up and bought a cheap TI just for loaning it out.
I am still using an HP48 up to this day. I have other HPs and TIs as well. But that one is my favorite by far. If SwissMicros ever builds a clone of the 48, I will buy it.
Pff my Nokia 900 has *arbitrary precision* (until you run out of heap space) with GNU MPL and that suckers 10 years old. I had a crappy TI83, then an awesome (nonplatinum!) TI89, but often yanked my fathers HP48. The 15, 42 and 48s and the last run of 50s were absolute killers. HP Laserjet III's (still running, half a million page count!), the 3458 8 1/2 digit DMM, man oh man. Fiorina absolutely gutted that company taking it from 50 years of rock solid engineering into just a tragic shell, just so she could see a quarterly share price bump (that'd last half a year before investors realize they have no good products or engineering left, dumping the market cap to 1/10th the original value) and pay herself a performance bonus.
HP 41 with all the ROM packs. I have land surveying, cut & fill. My father was a civil engineer & hydrologist. Now he is a hydraul-o-ghost. RIP Dad. His ashes went into some of the rivers he did work on. The Arkansas River, The Rio Grande, The Pecos, The Mississippi, The Salt & Gila which flow into The Colorado. The Gunnison which flows into The Colorado. And just for fun, Paradox Canyon. What is the paradox of Paradox Canyon? The river flows out of both ends of the canyon. It's a great way to get lost.
Great story, and fine way to honor your dad. My sister (I'm old) always loved the Bighorn Basin and Devil's Canyon in northern Wyoming/southern Montana. Some of her ashes went into the Bighorn River from the overlook. Of course there was a wind, so we ended up eating a little of her.
I still have my HP 11C which I got 32 years ago from my father for my birthday. It still works perfectly, and I use it almost every day. I love it! It's good to see that SwissMicros carries on the legacy of these great calculators.
That's awesome! My first calc was a TI SR-10 (yeah, I know... sacrilege to the RPN fans). It only had add, sub, mult, div, square, square root and reciprocal.... and it cost $150. But it was worth it. I sold it after a few years and purchased the programmable TI-55. And believe it or not, I still have it. Great video. Thanks for sharing. :)
@@omniryx1 Amen. I sat down with the HP manual, read the tutorial, and then realized, after doing a couple of calculations, that RPN was going to make my life SO much easier.
It looks like someone couldn't figure out that RPN operates like pencil and paper calculation. Once I figured that out, my TI calculators lost their practical value to me.
I've loved my HP42s for the last 22 years. Gonna get myself one of these for everyday use though, I think I'll look at a landscape one as well. Thanks for making this video.
Very nice, my favorite calculator was the HP28S, I also like the HP48GX which was more capable but the 28S will always have a special place in my heart.
Oooh. The HP41C was my college calculator. I had the clock/timer module for it which was really cool. It had very powerful time/date functions in addition to all the math stuff. This really brings back memories! I swore by that calculator, as well as the HP16C which I used almost exclusively (invaluable as an assembly/machine-language programmer since everything we did was in HEX). The real question is whether this knock-off is using base-10 or base-2 floating point. I seem to recall that all the HP calculators used base-10 floating point (BCD) storage formats, whereas all modern computers use Base-2 mantissa and exponent formats. It was a big deal, because you can't exactly represent base-10 fractional values using base-2 mantissas. I'm guessing this reproduction doesn't go that far. These days, yah... I use the Casio fx-115es. Quite a few years old itself. But I really hate it because it doesn't have a permanent ENG mode. The ENG button isn't a 'sticky' mode. Drives me nuts. I just want the blasted thing to always display results in engineering notation, period. -Matt
My first calculator was an HP-45. I spent about $400 on it, which in 1973 was real money. As a result, I can only use RPN calculators. I never get the right answers with an algebraic calculator. Now, I use RealCalc on my Android phone which has an RPN setting and resembles an HP calculator.
nitpicking... at 2:59 the binary floating point 128-bit box is highlighted, but per the website the calculator uses a decimal floating point 128-bit library- which makes sense for a calculator application. Also, that chip is a cortex-M4 which has 32-bit binary float hardware. I wonder if that gets any use in the firmware?
I'm glad to see reproductions of these old HP classics. It brings back memories. In 1973, my freshman year at MTU, we were taught how to use a slide rule. 4-function calculators like the TI SR-10 had become popular but we were not allowed to use them on tests, only slide rules were allowed. The next year the engineering departments finally saw the future and allowed calculators on tests but the new HP-45, HP's first scientific calculator, was expensive, something like $400 back then. My roommate was one of the first to buy one but I couldn't afford the price so opted for an SR-10 which at the time cost a whopping $99. I didn't like it much so didn't cry too hard when I lost it one day as it gave me a chance to plunk down the dough for a new HP 25 Programmable Scientific calculator which I still own. I loved the thing and used it throughout my early career through several sets of home-repaired nicad battery packs, but when the keyboard started acting flaky I replaced it with an HP 32S II. Great machine, it has served me well the past 20 years or so. I use calculators only occasionally now but I find I can't use the algebraics for scientific functions anymore without reteaching myself basic formula notation first. The HPs had brought out the elitist in me. Real Engineers use RPN, algebraics are only for engineer wannabees!
@alysdexia Sure, if you string them out like 2 Enter 2.5 x 2 x 3 x - .5 x, etc. No need to press an "Equal" button for each operation. There is in fact, no Equal button to press. Programmable RPN calculators can do these steps repeatedly and pause for you to enter each bit of data.
@@stevejohnson1685 A little late in responding, but no, I lost it someplace in Wadsworth Hall. Was there for the last year the Busch Brewery was in business, though. Rumor had it the beer was brewed using the runoff from the mine which was why it tasted so bad...
SwissMicros calculators are amazing - I want to get a DM15L someday. It's sad when the highest-quality HP calculators currently available are not made by HP. The display line bug is rather surprising. Maybe they've fixed it, and you're running an older version of the firmware?
I came across a HP-71B , a few weeks back, after a neighbour's wife was clearing all his old stuff from his work days- I was chuffed t bits - it's even got a infra red wand with it too !! and the magnetic card read adopter - What a score !!
Doing shift+Alpha allows entry into the "alpha register" on the old HP42s (and here too). To be able to use the alphabet on the keys, one brings up something requiring alpha input, such as Label, and then shift+up or shift+down cycles through uppercase, lowercase, and none in the little brackets shown at the top of the screen. When uppercase, all keys with a letter next to them now can be used to type uppercase A-Z symbols and desiring to enter a number in the string requires shifting back to "none". Not obvious without being told but a decent workaround for a feature added that the original 42s didn't have.
To access the letters, you press the Yellow button (Referred to as ctrl or 2nd, we will call it ctrl). After pressing the ctrl key, press enter which will enter alpha mode which will let you press buttons to insert letters. You can exit it by doing the same process.
Are the white labels on the buttons just printed or are they laser etched into the button? As a heavy calc user I hate printed buttons because the printing wears out or rubs away after months of use... I could not find anything on their website to indicate how they label the buttons...
In the early '80s I had a HP41CV during my EEC course at Meadowbank. Once I got used to RPN it was a great programmable calculator. It came with a sizeable set of manuals. It finally died only about five years ago when a Duracrap cell leaked and destroyed the board and the pads on the back of the LCD.
I have 3 HP 32S's 1 heavily used since I bought it in '88 and two brand new in the boxs. One is the 50th anniversary edition. The 32S or the 15C are my go to every day calcs. I'll be dead before I need another.
Nice video; the multi-line e-Ink display is quite an improvement, as well as the mechanical assembly when compared to the crappy HP method where you had to almost destroy the calculator to open it. You miss on the nice tactile feel of the keys, though (and perhaps battery life). IMHO, you need to have quite a lot of burning cash in your pocket to pay that much.
About? If you are going to throw insults, at least be honest and specific. If you refer to my comment about how HP used a crap system based on plastic rivets and designed to impair repairability then it is not ignorance but a fact, especially when compared to what pretty much all other manufacturers at the time did by using plastic snaps and screws.
@alysdexia, if you think that calling an object or method "crap" is an insult, I can only infer that you hold HP products too close to your heart. However, calling me a nescius is a personal insult that is typical of someone with no arguments to contribute to an intelligent discussion. Have a nice day.
I had my fair share of being in love with pocket calculators especially when they very expensive and very hard to come by in Brazil... someone would need to bring one from their international travels... even nowadays I still feel kinda mesmerized when I see an HP15 picture even though I have no use whatsoever for such beautiful device.
3:02 You circled the wrong row, the calculator uses decimal128 for legacy (and it has an option for binary64 for speed, while sacrificing program compatibility)
It can actually do graphics - with some additional Free42 compatible programs (which are not necessarily backwards compatible with HP 42S). In fact there are a ton of programs (new and old) that can be loaded into storage and called up as needed. Visit forum.swissmicros.com for more info.
@@SimonWoodburyForget The DM42 can do low, medium, and high precision floating point arithmetic. The functionality just has to be added in software. In fact, the quad-precision floating point calculations are done in software by the intel library.
@@SimonWoodburyForget Graphing calculators almost never contain a graphics card. Besides, the hardware they're using contains an FPU, meaning that the CPU can efficiently process floats natively. This hardware could easily handle the calculations required to draw graphs. The TI-84, which is still a very popular graphing calculator, only has a simple, 8-bit, 15MHz CPU and no graphics card nor an FPU. What makes you think a modern 32-bit CPU can't handle it?
@@SimonWoodburyForget using software or hardware doesn't change your question though. Anything a calculator can do could be accomplished faster on a PC. Calculators are a convenience item. They'll increase your productivity sometimes, bit that's about it.
OK, that's IT... I'm ordering! SwissMicro picking up where HP left off. 2022 update: I've had my DM42 for a while now and I am very satisfied with it to say the least. I am ordering my second calculator (different model) from SwissMicros in about a week, and my third in two months, fourth in hopefully less than a year...and so on...Thanks EEVblog!
The only question is, will this go the route of Numworks? (Try to go for that education market, only to get their firmware closed-sourced for exam compliance)
I think this is far from the world's most precise calculator, but one without CAS certainly. I used to have a TI Voyage 200 and that thing was much more precise, however it uses a computer algebra system and is capable of exact symbolic calculations.
There are also calculators with variable precision. The built-in Android calculator for example will calculate as many digits as you want--just swipe on the result.
@@CaspaB The list price of the hp-35 when released, was $395 (US). A year or so later, it was reduced to $295, when the hp-45 came out, at $395. Are you quoting the price converted to current (2018) dollars? Fred
My first calculator at university was an HP-11C, then an HP-41CX that I could hookup to the equipment in the lab and run experiments with. I bought the HP-15 LE only to realize it wasn't anything like the original, it bricked itself in no time but the others are still working. The HP Voyager series had the best layout for any calculator. I think I'll get a couple of these DM-15L for myself and my kids.
with all the companies these days that clearly spend all their money making their website look pretty rather than manufacturing products from quality materials it's nice to see someone doing the exact opposite
That's their mini one. The DM16L will be full-sized, also what I'm waiting for. Same innards, but the buttons are what make the old machines such wonderful daily drivers. This DM42 looks nice and all, but I have an original HP-42S and [something something] cold dead hands :)
My HP16C together with my 41CV are some of my most prized possessions. They are next to me on my desk and I use them almost daily. Still works perfectly and looking in mint condition after 30+ years.
I have the HP-16 C replacement, swiss micros calls it the DM-16 C, but I didn't see it on their site the last time I looked it's a nice calculator though.
I had one of the old HPs at school. And Texas Instruments, which was up in the loft at one time. Then there was the Sinclair which also used reverse Polish notation.
You know... I would like a remake of the TI 83+ that was built as well as you'd expect for a 100 euro machine. The real one, while it is a good calculator, is really built as cheaply as they can get away with... I suspect the cost to manufacture one is not much more than 15 bucks.
ManWithBeard1990 I’d be surprised if it was much over $5. I’m sure they have at least a part or two in them where cost has gone up due to nobody but TI buying them... but yeah there’s gotta be at least *some* economies of scale with the TI 8x.
Remember saving for months to buy a HP42-C. Still have it. And still remember how to force it to double the clockspeed. Has to be the very first overclocking I ever did. Guess it was back in - 87 or so.
Thoughts: 1- It looks great, but I'm not sure about having to unscrew the back to replace that battery. 2- To emulate the old HP41's function modules, could you connect a USB Thumb drive? 3- are there plans to hack this, adding functions etc? [examples: increasing number of digits shown, plotting graphs]
1-The battery on mine has lasted over a year now, with daily use at work, and still reads with a full voltage. I think you'll have months of warning to change the battery when it indicates "low" and it unscrews very nicely. 2-I suppose you could. It has the ability to save states, so you could load a bunch of programs for one "module" save that as a state, and then create another "module" with a set of programs, and then load whichever "state" you want. I do that with my electrical engineering programs (one setup), my radar programs (a different setup) and my just regular every-day programs (a third setup) which I can switch between with a few button presses. 3-No need to really hack it, the calculator is made for people to write their own programs for and there are some working on that now, though progress is slow due to not much documentation. The 42s software is a program loaded onto the machine, but you could have multiple programs stored at once and switch between them in the setup.
@@k7iq Yea, if you're getting striked, you get the notification for unlisted videos as well. Also you can keep it unlisted to get video rendered to all resolutions to be ready when video is released.
I get that you're reacting to the promotional fluff of "the most precise calculator" that they've attached to this device, but your comment triggers a rant of mine. I hate the fact that when I do a string of calculations, my HP 50 won't give me the answer without pressing another button. It doesn't help that I can never remember which button I need to press to turn the symbolic answer into a string of digits. It's like they took what's useful about having a handheld calculator and deliberately destroyed it. Since engineering measurements are rarely made to more than three significant figures, and since the engineering models that you're going to use with a handheld calculators (as opposed to putting into a computer program) are usually just rules of thumb, I don't really care who is "the most precise." I want an easy answer that's good enough, and "good enough" means "about as precise as the measurements and the models." That's really what's prevented me from getting comfortable with using the HP 50. I wish Swiss Micro had a portrait version of their DM41L, but I maybe could be see my way clear to buying one of these in the next year or so.
@@jonathanguthrie9368 just switch it into approximate mode (shift+equal if I remember right) and turn auto simplification on. I think that will do the trick.
@@danielmewes Thanks for the tip. I really appreciate it. Now, if there was just a way to make the approximate mode the only mode it was possible to enter.
I liked the sloped sculpted keys. This doesn't have those. Also, the HP keys were molded with the printing all the way through. Do these keys printing scratch off?
>USD 200, that's more than some cheap Android phone. And then even with bugs like no help, only 11 digits displayed, display bugs, and unusable programming interface? No thanks. PS: the forensic test would be more useful with a -9 operation at the end.
@@mgscheue Just look at 13:40 and the next minute how painful it is. Dave himself mentions it at 15:46 that there are better alternatives nowadays. It is only for those people who already know the original and who wants one for nostalgic reasons.
@@mgscheue Yes it's unusable as we're in 2018. At $230 on AMZN it's a rip-off. Just launch Python in a terminal on your smartphone and you'll have ten time the precision and comfort. For free !
Still have my HP 15C from early 1980s (I also have a 12C, I rarely use), as my Go To calculator. Just changed the original battery in my DM42 (2017, early). Ordered the replacement keypad dome … and installed latest firmware.
I remember a former colleague of mine had an authentic HP35. I was a little afraid to touch it, because I knew it was such an iconic model and I didn't want to break it
12:54 Well, no, not your imagination - we noticed 10 minutes earlier in the video. Such _obvious_ software bugs being unfixed, along with the missing help files, unusable (?) extra precision, etc., is infuriating. With the shitty build quality (seriously, those buttons will snap sooner or later) and the absurd price tag, I'll stay away from this product. Very disappointing :( I do understand that this is "calculator porn" for many people, and I _love_ its screen, but with 200$ you could get a mid-range Android phone and load the arbitrary-precision GUI calculator of your choice (there are surely dozens, free of charge). More readable, more usable, more powerful, more precise. And more power-hungry :P
boggisthecat You are spot on there. I fucking *hate* the touchscreen paradigm. Whoever came up with the idea of a screen "keyboard" to represent the functionality of mechanical keys will be the first I put up against the wall to be shot when the revolution comes...
boggisthecat, I won't disagree - if calculators are that important to your job, get an OTG cable and a good, _mechanical_ keyboard along with the smartphone :P PS. "The touchscreen paradigm" is fine for text input thanks to swiping, which is awesome for mobile devices. I'll agree that it sucks for numbers (or for words not in the dictionary), tapping on the screen is horrible.
Is there a way to disable the RPN functionality? I'd rather have formula entry similar to a Casio or TI. The extra precision doesn't mean squat if it's annoying to use.
UPDATE: It can display more than 11 digits, press and hold Shift SHOW.
Actual forensics result: pbs.twimg.com/media/DuqjX9oUUAAP-HO.jpg
You can also use the full keyboard continuously without having to shift through the menu th-cam.com/video/cY5Djl0qEa8/w-d-xo.htmlm30s
Sorry Dave, but the real king for precision is still the HP-50g!
It has many arbitrary precision libraries like www.hpcalc.org/details/5363 , which boasts more than 1000 digits mantissa, +/- 999999999 exponent for basic arithmetic functions, +/- 9999 exponent for the other functions, and 4 rounding modes! (out-of-the-box it is limited to a mere 12mant/3exp for the user and 15mant/5exp via SysRPL commands) :)
EEVblog, that's pretty cool!
I can get arbitrary precision on my phone with termux and running a python interpreter. stackoverflow.com/questions/11522933/python-floating-point-arbitrary-precision-available
This is true but isn't the hp-50g crazy precision just a program? Would it not be possible to create something similar for the dm42? It has better hardware afterall.
Out of the box the dm42 and the wp34s are the most precise calculators as far as I'm aware.
I wish I was as enthusiastic with my entire life as this man is with his calculator
So true
calculator: is metal
guy: *moans*
Welcome to the club
Lol
He's on drugs.
At the risk of giving away my age, my first-year chemistry Prof said, "A calculator is a device by which a freshman can determine the wrong answer to eight significant digits".
There are a lot of UToob vid's by self-proclaimed experts doing exactly that. Teachers and lecturers too.
I think I had that prof. In my freshman year (1973) we were actually forbidden to use the new TI SR-10 4-function calculator on tests which cost me $99 at the time. We were also discouraged from using them on homework in favor of learning the more advanced functions of our slide rules. By my sophomore year the Eng. Dept. relented and allowed us to use calculators on tests but under controlled conditions. That year my roommate bought an HP-45 Scientific and when my old SR-10 got stolen I bought a new HP-25, which I still have, along with my old slide rule. Marvelous machines - can't do math without using RPN even now.
Sincerely Yours If you can remember the model number of your 1973 function calculator at least you can relax in the knowledge that you are not suffering from Alzheimer’s. Darn, where did I leave my slide rule?
priyeshxkb Back to the future, boyo.
I still have my two slide rules. They still work ... fantastic back scratching devices. :)
This is definitely a "right to repair" friendly device: Open source firmware, off the shelf microprocessor and even instructions on how to take it apart written on the PCB!
You clowns and your bogeymen.
7:51 - They need the *black solder mask* since you can see the PCB through the openings for the keys. One time when using a black solder mask is actually the right choice!
Dave only hates the *glossy*-black kind of solder mask...
It was on the backside though
Zeikou they don’t usually make pcb with shielding only on one side do they?
I'd rather see the PCB, it makes it feel more real. Of course, that's just my personal preference.
So they could have back lit the keys?
I have this calculator on my desk now, and I'm yelling things at the screen. :D
You can see the full precision with "show" (second function of the decimal key). You can also subtract 9 from the result of the calculator forensics result to see the leftovers. :)
You can upgrade the whole thing online, of course... but even better, you can download programs and save them. Hell, you can even change the pictures that come up when the calculator is off. I've uploaded a bunch of NASA-themed pictures on the DM42 forums.
Too bad I only use it to convert between hex, decimal, and binary these days. Oh well. At least I can convert in STYLE!
For extra style, have something Rocket Girls themed. It's an anime where HP42S was used as a (very) minor plot point.
but can you play drug wars?
@alysdexia There's no built-in functionality to do that, but it would be trivial to write a program. In fact, one may already exist.
By the way, you can upload and download programs via USB.
The Windows calculator is the most precise I know. If you subtract 9 you get 1.335466894135216688356603775832e-45.
As a mechanical engineer I accumulated a lot of old hp calculators over the years. I have hp 41CV, 15C, 28S, 20S, 48G, 49g+ calculators. I've also got an hp calculator IR thermal printer and paper. Plus a few more older hp calculators I can't remember right now. The older models with the "rocker" style keys were the best in my opinion. You could fly through a long calculation by just tapping the keys without having to watch the display to make sure you didn't get multiple digits with a single key press. Ti calculators with their "floating" keys had a bad habit of giving you a screen full of 7's or some other digit with a single key press. This was a problem Ti calculators had especially when they got older. The original hp "rocker" top-hinged keys with tactile feedback were great. Unfortunately, later and current hp calculator keys are ok but not as good as the original keys. I also had a Ti 59 with magnetic card read/writer and cradle with thermal printer with two optional math modules. I gave it away to one of our drafters back in the late 80s.
correct❤❤❤ the tactile key feel is critical!!
What about HP 41CX?
I bought my in the 80s, unfortunately, I did not buy the application modules.
5 years ago after watching this video I decided to buy the DM42 and never regretted it.
Great device, also have the DM15.
Same here. Sitting with my DM42 in my hand right now, remembered this video, came back to pay respects.
I also got the DM15 but I unfortunately got the model with the spotty display - tried to 'bake it' (as per advice on the forum) and ruined it :(
Yup. Have the DM42 and 41X. Just yesterday celebrated the arrival of the DM42n, because "why not?"
Rpn calculators was always fun to loan out to a unsuspecting student who forget their calculator. HP for the win!
I wish someone would manufacture a cheap scientific RPN calculator. Like a RPN version of the Casio-260fx.
Actually, I did that to a professor once who asked to borrow my calculator and when I handed him my HP-41CV, he handed it right back.
I screw up badly on regular calculators, I really have to concentrate to use them, which means I still keep my HP28S handy at home and have a RPN calculator app installed on my phone. The combination of RPN and a stack is pure gold.
@@strandvaskeren I just got to 28s's from a guy on evil bay, I've had a 41 for a while and been wanting to play with one of these.
Always used an HP in college and dreaded when someone wanted to use my calc, you spent so much time just explaining it to them I gave up and bought a cheap TI just for loaning it out.
DM42 stands for *D* igital *M* ultimeter with the answer to life, universe and everything.
@@Okurka. You've got it ….. * … wild card...or …"what ever you want it to be"
LOL! The DM stands for Dave and Michael, the entire staff of SwissMicros.
David: *opens the package excitedly*
My better half: "Honey, what are those noises, what are you watching?!"
Better half: OH! I'm INTO it!
"Lets have a squizz"
I am still using an HP48 up to this day. I have other HPs and TIs as well. But that one is my favorite by far. If SwissMicros ever builds a clone of the 48, I will buy it.
Add a third to the waiting list
Same!
My 48SX and 41CV both still work but I don’t use them very often. Easier to use Maxima on the PC or the HP48 emulator on Android.
I just run Driod48 on my phone.
Same !!
Did the sin->cos->tan trick on my TI-82 and it returned a 8,99999997.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
A year late but thumbs up for the Reviewbrah reference.
I did it on a Ti-34 and got 8.890977083
Did it on my phone and got 9,0000000001510945880155434847088316327936
Did it on my Casio fx991x and got 9.000000007
I did it in my very cheap Deli DL-D991ES XPlus (has someone even heard its name?) and it returned 9.000000004
@1:30 - Had to turn it down... sounded like i was watching a porn xD :) :P :D
nerdgasm :p
More like listening to a pretentious dickhead.
Electro-Porn!
''Metal, none of that plastic rubbish'' -Porn
"Love a good root"
Thanks for this. In college I started with an HP21, Currently use the HP42S. HP makes the best calculators. Go RPN.
Pff my Nokia 900 has *arbitrary precision* (until you run out of heap space) with GNU MPL and that suckers 10 years old. I had a crappy TI83, then an awesome (nonplatinum!) TI89, but often yanked my fathers HP48. The 15, 42 and 48s and the last run of 50s were absolute killers. HP Laserjet III's (still running, half a million page count!), the 3458 8 1/2 digit DMM, man oh man.
Fiorina absolutely gutted that company taking it from 50 years of rock solid engineering into just a tragic shell, just so she could see a quarterly share price bump (that'd last half a year before investors realize they have no good products or engineering left, dumping the market cap to 1/10th the original value) and pay herself a performance bonus.
Arbitrary precision is the shit
@@kikicat123 it really is. it's also fantastic to implement, a real challenge and i loved it in CS
HP 41 with all the ROM packs. I have land surveying, cut & fill. My father was a civil engineer & hydrologist. Now he is a hydraul-o-ghost. RIP Dad. His ashes went into some of the rivers he did work on. The Arkansas River, The Rio Grande, The Pecos, The Mississippi, The Salt & Gila which flow into The Colorado. The Gunnison which flows into The Colorado. And just for fun, Paradox Canyon. What is the paradox of Paradox Canyon? The river flows out of both ends of the canyon. It's a great way to get lost.
Great story, and fine way to honor your dad. My sister (I'm old) always loved the Bighorn Basin and Devil's Canyon in northern Wyoming/southern Montana. Some of her ashes went into the Bighorn River from the overlook. Of course there was a wind, so we ended up eating a little of her.
I still have my HP 11C which I got 32 years ago from my father for my birthday. It still works perfectly, and I use it almost every day. I love it! It's good to see that SwissMicros carries on the legacy of these great calculators.
Still using my HP 32S I bought new back in 1988. The keys are just as wonderfully tactile as they were 30 years ago!
That's awesome! My first calc was a TI SR-10 (yeah, I know... sacrilege to the RPN fans). It only had add, sub, mult, div, square, square root and reciprocal.... and it cost $150. But it was worth it.
I sold it after a few years and purchased the programmable TI-55. And believe it or not, I still have it.
Great video. Thanks for sharing. :)
Love how you turn into golem around calculators… "my precious"
You mean Gollum. A golem is another guy.
Joke of the era: RPN has no equals.
Keep trying, Bernd, you'll figure it out.
@@omniryx1 Amen. I sat down with the HP manual, read the tutorial, and then realized, after doing a couple of calculations, that RPN was going to make my life SO much easier.
I use droid48 on my phone (free HP-48 emulator, HP released the roms!) all the time.
It looks like someone couldn't figure out that RPN operates like pencil and paper calculation. Once I figured that out, my TI calculators lost their practical value to me.
You show all 34 digits by using yellow shift and then select "show"...
I've loved my HP42s for the last 22 years. Gonna get myself one of these for everyday use though, I think I'll look at a landscape one as well. Thanks for making this video.
Very nice, my favorite calculator was the HP28S, I also like the HP48GX which was more capable but the 28S will always have a special place in my heart.
Oooh. The HP41C was my college calculator. I had the clock/timer module for it which was really cool. It had very powerful time/date functions in addition to all the math stuff. This really brings back memories! I swore by that calculator, as well as the HP16C which I used almost exclusively (invaluable as an assembly/machine-language programmer since everything we did was in HEX).
The real question is whether this knock-off is using base-10 or base-2 floating point. I seem to recall that all the HP calculators used base-10 floating point (BCD) storage formats, whereas all modern computers use Base-2 mantissa and exponent formats. It was a big deal, because you can't exactly represent base-10 fractional values using base-2 mantissas. I'm guessing this reproduction doesn't go that far.
These days, yah... I use the Casio fx-115es. Quite a few years old itself. But I really hate it because it doesn't have a permanent ENG mode. The ENG button isn't a 'sticky' mode. Drives me nuts. I just want the blasted thing to always display results in engineering notation, period.
-Matt
I'm married with my HP48G since 1994 ...
Hoping for a DM48 with NewRPL or ability to load HP48G ROM. I'm right there with you, year and all! RPL for the win.
I used HP-48sx during my university time around 1993 still have it working, and lovin' it...
My first calculator was an HP-45. I spent about $400 on it, which in 1973 was real money. As a result, I can only use RPN calculators. I never get the right answers with an algebraic calculator. Now, I use RealCalc on my Android phone which has an RPN setting and resembles an HP calculator.
I wrote a library for 80-bit floats for the Z80, now I know I need to implement octa precision to one-up this calc's precision >_>
(Using on a TI-83+/84+)
Yaaaas! Still have an HP-42s in my desk drawer! And my go-to calc app on the phone is Free42.
I have the DM16 and it is nothing less than fantastic. With a little programming it is actually also both easy and fun to use.
HP also used flat flex battery contacts in some of their calculators. I used to have a 41CX which had those.
I wish my lecturers could talk with this much passion.
Tststs... Cheating on the customs declaration... 22CHF :p
perhaps the cost of manufacturing one :p
I abolutely understand and love your enthusiasm.
I still have dad's HP67 in great shape!!
nitpicking... at 2:59 the binary floating point 128-bit box is highlighted, but per the website the calculator uses a decimal floating point 128-bit library- which makes sense for a calculator application. Also, that chip is a cortex-M4 which has 32-bit binary float hardware. I wonder if that gets any use in the firmware?
I'm glad to see reproductions of these old HP classics. It brings back memories. In 1973, my freshman year at MTU, we were taught how to use a slide rule. 4-function calculators like the TI SR-10 had become popular but we were not allowed to use them on tests, only slide rules were allowed. The next year the engineering departments finally saw the future and allowed calculators on tests but the new HP-45, HP's first scientific calculator, was expensive, something like $400 back then. My roommate was one of the first to buy one but I couldn't afford the price so opted for an SR-10 which at the time cost a whopping $99. I didn't like it much so didn't cry too hard when I lost it one day as it gave me a chance to plunk down the dough for a new HP 25 Programmable Scientific calculator which I still own. I loved the thing and used it throughout my early career through several sets of home-repaired nicad battery packs, but when the keyboard started acting flaky I replaced it with an HP 32S II. Great machine, it has served me well the past 20 years or so. I use calculators only occasionally now but I find I can't use the algebraics for scientific functions anymore without reteaching myself basic formula notation first. The HPs had brought out the elitist in me. Real Engineers use RPN, algebraics are only for engineer wannabees!
@alysdexia Sure, if you string them out like 2 Enter 2.5 x 2 x 3 x - .5 x, etc. No need to press an "Equal" button for each operation. There is in fact, no Equal button to press. Programmable RPN calculators can do these steps repeatedly and pause for you to enter each bit of data.
Did you lose your SR-10 down the Quincy Mine? That's the MTU you attended, right?
The HP45 was not "HP's first scientific calculator". HP had several desktop models years before their first pocket scientific and that was the HP35.
@@stevejohnson1685 A little late in responding, but no, I lost it someplace in Wadsworth Hall. Was there for the last year the Busch Brewery was in business, though. Rumor had it the beer was brewed using the runoff from the mine which was why it tasted so bad...
That is the nicest modern product I seen, thanks for sharing.
SwissMicros calculators are amazing - I want to get a DM15L someday. It's sad when the highest-quality HP calculators currently available are not made by HP. The display line bug is rather surprising. Maybe they've fixed it, and you're running an older version of the firmware?
I came across a HP-71B , a few weeks back, after a neighbour's wife was clearing all his old stuff from his work days- I was chuffed t bits - it's even got a infra red wand with it too !! and the magnetic card read adopter - What a score !!
Maybe SHIFT+ENTER/ALPHA to insert the A-Z symbols?
Doing shift+Alpha allows entry into the "alpha register" on the old HP42s (and here too). To be able to use the alphabet on the keys, one brings up something requiring alpha input, such as Label, and then shift+up or shift+down cycles through uppercase, lowercase, and none in the little brackets shown at the top of the screen. When uppercase, all keys with a letter next to them now can be used to type uppercase A-Z symbols and desiring to enter a number in the string requires shifting back to "none". Not obvious without being told but a decent workaround for a feature added that the original 42s didn't have.
To access the letters, you press the Yellow button (Referred to as ctrl or 2nd, we will call it ctrl). After pressing the ctrl key, press enter which will enter alpha mode which will let you press buttons to insert letters. You can exit it by doing the same process.
I’ve done it, I’ve reached the end of the internet
The end or a new beginning
congratulations!!!❤❤❤ me too!!
Are the white labels on the buttons just printed or are they laser etched into the button?
As a heavy calc user I hate printed buttons because the printing wears out or rubs away after months of use...
I could not find anything on their website to indicate how they label the buttons...
8:43 - they know their customers! Telling how to properly disassemble the unit.
In the early '80s I had a HP41CV during my EEC course at Meadowbank. Once I got used to RPN it was a great programmable calculator. It came with a sizeable set of manuals. It finally died only about five years ago when a Duracrap cell leaked and destroyed the board and the pads on the back of the LCD.
I have 3 HP 32S's
1 heavily used since I bought it in '88 and two brand new in the boxs. One is the 50th anniversary edition.
The 32S or the 15C are my go to every day calcs. I'll be dead before I need another.
I have had my 42S since 1992(ish). It is the oldest piece of digital technology that I own, and it still works perfectly!
Aw, man, i've got 48gx, 49g, 49g+, Prime and some others, now i have to get this too...
"Love a good root" I almost missed that at 15:26. Thanks Rake, for teaching me Australian slang.
Nice video; the multi-line e-Ink display is quite an improvement, as well as the mechanical assembly when compared to the crappy HP method where you had to almost destroy the calculator to open it. You miss on the nice tactile feel of the keys, though (and perhaps battery life).
IMHO, you need to have quite a lot of burning cash in your pocket to pay that much.
About? If you are going to throw insults, at least be honest and specific.
If you refer to my comment about how HP used a crap system based on plastic rivets and designed to impair repairability then it is not ignorance but a fact, especially when compared to what pretty much all other manufacturers at the time did by using plastic snaps and screws.
@alysdexia, if you think that calling an object or method "crap" is an insult, I can only infer that you hold HP products too close to your heart. However, calling me a nescius is a personal insult that is typical of someone with no arguments to contribute to an intelligent discussion. Have a nice day.
I had my fair share of being in love with pocket calculators especially when they very expensive and very hard to come by in Brazil... someone would need to bring one from their international travels... even nowadays I still feel kinda mesmerized when I see an HP15 picture even though I have no use whatsoever for such beautiful device.
Quer comprar uma HP 42S?
Me: "Is that an e-ink display?"
EEV: "That's an e-ink display!"
Nope. It's not an e-ink display. It's a Sharp low power memory LCD which is similar in concept but uses a different technology.
transflective memory LCD, not e-ink
3:02 You circled the wrong row, the calculator uses decimal128 for legacy (and it has an option for binary64 for speed, while sacrificing program compatibility)
I believe the LCD is a Sharp LS027B7DH01.
Dave, the type of guy who makes me waste time and money in calculators I don't need.
With a board like THAT they could make a full custom graphing calculator - or better yet, beat TI at their own game :P
To beat TI at their own game?. Overpriced calculators?.
It can actually do graphics - with some additional Free42 compatible programs (which are not necessarily backwards compatible with HP 42S). In fact there are a ton of programs (new and old) that can be loaded into storage and called up as needed. Visit forum.swissmicros.com for more info.
@@SimonWoodburyForget The DM42 can do low, medium, and high precision floating point arithmetic. The functionality just has to be added in software. In fact, the quad-precision floating point calculations are done in software by the intel library.
@@SimonWoodburyForget Graphing calculators almost never contain a graphics card. Besides, the hardware they're using contains an FPU, meaning that the CPU can efficiently process floats natively. This hardware could easily handle the calculations required to draw graphs.
The TI-84, which is still a very popular graphing calculator, only has a simple, 8-bit, 15MHz CPU and no graphics card nor an FPU. What makes you think a modern 32-bit CPU can't handle it?
@@SimonWoodburyForget using software or hardware doesn't change your question though. Anything a calculator can do could be accomplished faster on a PC.
Calculators are a convenience item. They'll increase your productivity sometimes, bit that's about it.
Love these videos! I still use my HP15C that I got new back in the 80's. It's still working perfectly. :)
Those Voyagers (I've got the 11C, 12C, 15C and 16C) were so frugal with electrons. They run forever on their cells.
If it doesn't use #bignums, like any flavour of Lisp, then it just doesn't cut the mustard as far as precision is concerned.
OK, that's IT... I'm ordering! SwissMicro picking up where HP left off.
2022 update: I've had my DM42 for a while now and I am very satisfied with it to say the least. I am ordering my second calculator (different model) from SwissMicros in about a week, and my third in two months, fourth in hopefully less than a year...and so on...Thanks EEVblog!
I don't like the filled in zeros either. Unless there will _really_ be confusion with the letter O just use the standard narrower 0.
shift+f5 changes the font style.
The only question is, will this go the route of Numworks? (Try to go for that education market, only to get their firmware closed-sourced for exam compliance)
You're confusing precision with resolution.
So far my favorite calculator would be smartphone or the TI84+CE. For a normal calculator the 84+CE is crazy some of the functions if can do.
This reminded me that I have a HP 41CV in my parts cupboard. Yup, still works :D
TH-cam recommended thus channel to me, did not know there was a serious market place for calculators, nice!
Me to YT recommendations: am I a joke to you ?
After a few minutes: cant stop watching
Nice but is an HP-48 coming soon? That was my favorite with the added PCMCIA cards for specific functions!
I think this is far from the world's most precise calculator, but one without CAS certainly. I used to have a TI Voyage 200 and that thing was much more precise, however it uses a computer algebra system and is capable of exact symbolic calculations.
There are also calculators with variable precision. The built-in Android calculator for example will calculate as many digits as you want--just swipe on the result.
3:00 You highlighted the wrong line in the table there (it should be decimal128), although you spoke the correct number of digits and exponent range.
Just googled the DM42...holy crap, that is expensive!
It is more efficient to separate a wealthy fool from his money than a poor one
Yup, and you get more of the pi
My first hand-held calculator (HP35) , bought in 1973, cost a week's wages. (~$2000).
If you have an Android phone, just get the Free42 app.
@@CaspaB The list price of the hp-35 when released, was $395 (US).
A year or so later, it was reduced to $295, when the hp-45 came out, at $395.
Are you quoting the price converted to current (2018) dollars?
Fred
My first calculator at university was an HP-11C, then an HP-41CX that I could hookup to the equipment in the lab and run experiments with. I bought the HP-15 LE only to realize it wasn't anything like the original, it bricked itself in no time but the others are still working.
The HP Voyager series had the best layout for any calculator.
I think I'll get a couple of these DM-15L for myself and my kids.
you show all the digits by pressing show, shifted decimal point key.
with all the companies these days that clearly spend all their money making their website look pretty rather than manufacturing products from quality materials it's nice to see someone doing the exact opposite
I'm waiting for the HP-16C replacement - always wanted one. I have originals of many of the other models.
Looking at their site, they have one, named DM16, for 99CHF.
That's their mini one. The DM16L will be full-sized, also what I'm waiting for. Same innards, but the buttons are what make the old machines such wonderful daily drivers. This DM42 looks nice and all, but I have an original HP-42S and [something something] cold dead hands :)
@@tigerstein yeah, I want the DM16L which isn't released yet. The credit card sized one is cute but won't be pleasant to use.
My HP16C together with my 41CV are some of my most prized possessions. They are next to me on my desk and I use them almost daily. Still works perfectly and looking in mint condition after 30+ years.
I have the HP-16 C replacement, swiss micros calls it the DM-16 C, but I didn't see it on their site the last time I looked it's a nice calculator though.
I had one of the old HPs at school. And Texas Instruments, which was up in the loft at one time. Then there was the Sinclair which also used reverse Polish notation.
You know... I would like a remake of the TI 83+ that was built as well as you'd expect for a 100 euro machine. The real one, while it is a good calculator, is really built as cheaply as they can get away with... I suspect the cost to manufacture one is not much more than 15 bucks.
ManWithBeard1990 I’d be surprised if it was much over $5. I’m sure they have at least a part or two in them where cost has gone up due to nobody but TI buying them... but yeah there’s gotta be at least *some* economies of scale with the TI 8x.
@Lassi Kinnunen Let's say they could make it cheap enough to put it on store shelves for that price.
Remember saving for months to buy a HP42-C. Still have it. And still remember how to force it to double the clockspeed. Has to be the very first overclocking I ever did. Guess it was back in - 87 or so.
Show that video to Matt Parker
I actually own an HP 32S II calculator that looks a lot like the HP 42S. It's very nice and I use it frequently.
Yep
I love the unit conversions on the 32 SII
My calculator does double that. Uses a XILINX FPGA
Thoughts:
1- It looks great, but I'm not sure about having to unscrew the back to replace that battery.
2- To emulate the old HP41's function modules, could you connect a USB Thumb drive?
3- are there plans to hack this, adding functions etc? [examples: increasing number of digits shown, plotting graphs]
1-The battery on mine has lasted over a year now, with daily use at work, and still reads with a full voltage. I think you'll have months of warning to change the battery when it indicates "low" and it unscrews very nicely.
2-I suppose you could. It has the ability to save states, so you could load a bunch of programs for one "module" save that as a state, and then create another "module" with a set of programs, and then load whichever "state" you want. I do that with my electrical engineering programs (one setup), my radar programs (a different setup) and my just regular every-day programs (a third setup) which I can switch between with a few button presses.
3-No need to really hack it, the calculator is made for people to write their own programs for and there are some working on that now, though progress is slow due to not much documentation. The 42s software is a program loaded onto the machine, but you could have multiple programs stored at once and switch between them in the setup.
The video seems to be unlisted?
Interesting ! Maybe being unlisted will help keep the copy-strike-meanies away ?
It's up now
@@k7iq Yea, if you're getting striked, you get the notification for unlisted videos as well. Also you can keep it unlisted to get video rendered to all resolutions to be ready when video is released.
IR was a big thing in those days, I recall. It was contemporary with the 48S and G, which both had IR comms, so the hole being IR makes sense.
Wouldn't a calculator with symbolic math and arbitrary precision rationals such as the HP 50g be "the most precise" ? Literally no rounding at all.
I get that you're reacting to the promotional fluff of "the most precise calculator" that they've attached to this device, but your comment triggers a rant of mine.
I hate the fact that when I do a string of calculations, my HP 50 won't give me the answer without pressing another button. It doesn't help that I can never remember which button I need to press to turn the symbolic answer into a string of digits. It's like they took what's useful about having a handheld calculator and deliberately destroyed it.
Since engineering measurements are rarely made to more than three significant figures, and since the engineering models that you're going to use with a handheld calculators (as opposed to putting into a computer program) are usually just rules of thumb, I don't really care who is "the most precise." I want an easy answer that's good enough, and "good enough" means "about as precise as the measurements and the models."
That's really what's prevented me from getting comfortable with using the HP 50. I wish Swiss Micro had a portrait version of their DM41L, but I maybe could be see my way clear to buying one of these in the next year or so.
@@jonathanguthrie9368 just switch it into approximate mode (shift+equal if I remember right) and turn auto simplification on. I think that will do the trick.
@@danielmewes Thanks for the tip. I really appreciate it. Now, if there was just a way to make the approximate mode the only mode it was possible to enter.
Right shift and Enter gives an instant toggle between exact and approximate modes. Flag -105 can be changed by program commands if you need that.
It was not released in 1987, the release date for the 42S was October 31, 1988.
Thats not a knife!
But it's an Swiss Army Knife, fitting for a Swiss calculator..
@@drasiritzbir lol good call
"You call *that* a knife? . . . Now *THIS* is a knife!"
Fred
@@ffggddss Croc Dundee!
@@noblerkin Exactly. (Paul Hogan as ...)
Fred
I liked the sloped sculpted keys. This doesn't have those. Also, the HP keys were molded with the printing all the way through. Do these keys printing scratch off?
14:14 "I love a good root"
Don't we all!
A root in a ute? :-D
The solver function is a perfect feature.
>USD 200, that's more than some cheap Android phone. And then even with bugs like no help, only 11 digits displayed, display bugs, and unusable programming interface? No thanks. PS: the forensic test would be more useful with a -9 operation at the end.
A remake of a classic. Much prefer a real calculator to a phone. Unusable programming interface?
Frank is just trolling. Pay no attention.
@@mgscheue Real buttons are nice, but on my Android phone, I have HiPER Scientific Calculator app (in RPN mode).
@@mgscheue Just look at 13:40 and the next minute how painful it is. Dave himself mentions it at 15:46 that there are better alternatives nowadays. It is only for those people who already know the original and who wants one for nostalgic reasons.
@@mgscheue Yes it's unusable as we're in 2018. At $230 on AMZN it's a rip-off. Just launch Python in a terminal on your smartphone and you'll have ten time the precision and comfort. For free !
Still have my HP 15C from early 1980s (I also have a 12C, I rarely use),
as my Go To calculator.
Just changed the original battery in my DM42 (2017, early).
Ordered the replacement keypad dome … and installed latest firmware.
I bet it can show date-time in iso 8601 format, or at least I hope YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss :-)
I remember a former colleague of mine had an authentic HP35. I was a little afraid to touch it, because I knew it was such an iconic model and I didn't want to break it
12:54 Well, no, not your imagination - we noticed 10 minutes earlier in the video.
Such _obvious_ software bugs being unfixed, along with the missing help files, unusable (?) extra precision, etc., is infuriating. With the shitty build quality (seriously, those buttons will snap sooner or later) and the absurd price tag, I'll stay away from this product. Very disappointing :(
I do understand that this is "calculator porn" for many people, and I _love_ its screen, but with 200$ you could get a mid-range Android phone and load the arbitrary-precision GUI calculator of your choice (there are surely dozens, free of charge). More readable, more usable, more powerful, more precise.
And more power-hungry :P
Jason Doe
No tactile feedback on a touch-screen. It is the difference between typing on a very good real keyboard and tapping on a screen.
boggisthecat You are spot on there. I fucking *hate* the touchscreen paradigm. Whoever came up with the idea of a screen "keyboard" to represent the functionality of mechanical keys will be the first I put up against the wall to be shot when the revolution comes...
Benny Löfgren
Well... I wouldn’t go that far. But, yes, anything where you want fast and accurate keying is not well-served by touch-screens.
boggisthecat, I won't disagree - if calculators are that important to your job, get an OTG cable and a good, _mechanical_ keyboard along with the smartphone :P
PS. "The touchscreen paradigm" is fine for text input thanks to swiping, which is awesome for mobile devices. I'll agree that it sucks for numbers (or for words not in the dictionary), tapping on the screen is horrible.
@@bennylofgren3208 What? No love, er hate, because they think it's cool to take up half the screen with the keyboard?
Is there a way to disable the RPN functionality? I'd rather have formula entry similar to a Casio or TI.
The extra precision doesn't mean squat if it's annoying to use.
Says the non-engineer who has never had to punch out long complicated equations on a calculator. RPN FTW!
3:00 The wrong line is highlighted. The DM42 uses the Decimal128 format, not Binary128. Dave even said the right numbers!
I have a 42S. Notice how the buttons with additional menus have a dark background to indicate that. The SwissMicros one doesn’t do that.