( 45 reviews )
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Posted: Jul 15 2009
Being almost 67 year's old and now retired it has been a long time when I had been required to learn that math crap while in college. Long forgotten and now relearning these math procedures is an incredible amount of fun utilizing this HP 33S Scientific Calculator. If I would have one of these babies a long ago while in college, I know the math procedures would have been much more enjoyable. The only CON I have with it is I wish that there was a way in which to store written programs to a computer maybe using a USB or something.
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Posted: Jun 13 2009
I have owned top of the line graphing and scientific calculators from TI, HP, Casio, Sharp, etc. Back when I was a student, TI's were very cheaply made and often broke quite easily and similar HP products lasted almost forever. This machine, the HP33s, continues that HP tradition and is definitely put together very well. It is however very poorly implemented as a portable HP scientific calculator and to boot the keyboard is very poorly designed, oddly assembled in a characteristic V shape and overall just not very useful as a professional device for hand-held computations. The pros and cons as I see it are: PROS: 1) It has many of the standard features that we have come to expect on such a machine with the exception of statistical regressions beyond those that are strictly in the "linear" approximation (See CON below). Matrix manipulations and a few others are totally missing however, so be careful and look at the available list of functions before buying this unit, just to be safe and not sorry later on. 2) The machine itself operates reasonably fast (in some cases it is actually faster than the now revered successor, the HP35s even though they have the same mathematical processor inside!). 3) It has a nice and quite modern, curved body design that sits very nicely both on a desk or on a table as well as in your hand, but I don't like the "feel" of its keyboard. 4) Either the famous RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) and an algebraic Equation Operating System (EOS) are available to be chosen depending on the wishes of the user and on the problem to be tackled. CONS: 1) This unit initially had a absolutely awful decimal point problem that was even so bad that it was partially fixed by HP on later production units (since it was almost impossible to see the embedded decimal point, especially for certain number combinations). 2)Some functions that you would readily expect to be available with a single key press require instead at least two key presses, but usually with only a single shift key press first. 3) The RPN learning curve is quite steep, although very well worth the considerable effort, but this will heavily deter some good students from learning the RPN skills that can be effectively used for your entire lifetime once they are successfully mastered. 4) The HP33s requires two coin cell batteries which are usually much harder to find than traditional AA or AAA batteries, but as a result the unit is almost pocketable and is very light. 5) HP should have already added into the ROM the other standard common regression types (power law, exponential and logarithmic curve-fits) instead of having to waste valuable programming memory space for them after they have been programmed in by hand by the user. These as well as many more types are now readily available on both simpler HP algebraic-only machines (such as the HP Smartcalc 300s) as well as on competing similar models by both Casio (the FX-115ES) and by Sharp (the EL-506B or the EL-506WBBK). 6) There is no computer user interface available at all or even an external power adapter port. 7) It will not take the square root, etc. of negative numbers (it simply gives an error message), but many other currently available scientific calculators will readily accomplish this task. It will work with complex numbers, but this lack of full capability is very limiting in my opinion.
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Posted: May 25 2009
Good backup in case my pda w/ survey pro explodes. Tedious to enter equations and programs. Wish there was a small usb port to download programs instead of typing in 8 pages of programs one button at a time. Still i use it everyday, and couldn't live without it.
