( 7 reviews )
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Posted: Feb 22 2009
MUY BUEN PRODUCTO LO RECIBI SELLADO EN SU BLISTER, BIENE CON SU MANUAL, EL CABLE USB Y EL CD PARA INSTALARLO EN LA COMPUTADORA
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Posted: Oct 26 2008
The main thing I want to say is the 48gii has had a USB port since 2006, and as best I can tell this model doesn't suffer from the keyboard issues that plagued early production runs. Even if you do get a bad keyboard however, HP will honor its outstanding warranty policy. I would discount the irate reviews of yesteryear. If money is no object, you will want the hp 50g or one of the TI or Casio CAS calculators topping $100. If you are a student, you should probably get the calculator recommended by your instructor. But in terms of bang for the buck, the 48gii is an especially sweet deal right now, and I recommend it over the 40gs which runs about $20 more right now. I've found some troubling issues with the newly available hp 40gs which do NOT apply to the 48gii: - In EQW -- where you must be for most exact symbolic calculations -- the results appear in throbbing inverted text which is pretty hard to read. You can press VIEWS, to get normal text, but then often it's reduced to a tiny font and you must press yet another button to reach el display sympatico. - There's no universal Clear key that always works in equation writer. According to the User's Guide, SHIFT CLEAR clears the display -- but not so in EQW. Not always. Closest thing I've found is jumping to HOME, then back again to CAS. Yet the ON/CANCEL key is unused and could easily meet this need. - PUSH (mentioned in another review) does not round out the system as one would hope. Arbitrary expressions can not be transferred from HOME to EQW. From Mastering the hp 39gs & hp 40gs: "In general the PUSH command is not really very useful." I'm forced to agree. - Some expressions are not what a trained mathematician would expect. For example, in EQW, enter 4 / 2 right-arrow squared. The result looks all the world like 4 squared over 2. Press the ENTER key and you discover the 4/2 behaves as though it was enclosed in parentheses -- but it wasn't. HP should be really embarrassed by this. (Yes, I know the exponent is past the end of the divide line. That's beside the point.) - If you exceed the calculating power of the 40gs, and let it run for more than a minute or two, you will get no error message. It will simply lock up and your only recourse is a hard reset erasing the entire history. You may need a straight pin that fits in the reset hole in the back. For example, in EQW, press and hold down SHIFT followed by the square root key four times and then the 1 key. Release the SHIFT key and press ENTER (turn on complex mode, if prompted). If you don't press the ON key within approximately ninety seconds (and you may have to press it twice) you will get the lock up. But this is not an especially tortuous expression, and some expressions actually REQUIRE over two minutes to evaluate. - Occassionally, the 40gs locks up for no apparant reason. Once again, the history, and all your variables and functions, are toast. Three of these issues are moot on the 48gii and the remaining three were resolved in various ROM revisions years ago. The 48gii gets its pedigree from the HP's top-of-line 50g. 4/2 right-arrow squared actually encloses 4/2 in parentheses, and even after 10 ... 15 ... 20 minutes on the hour glass, a quick stroke of the ON key revives the 48gii with memory intact. Finally, in nine months of daily use the 48gii hasn't once required a reset. There are several other reasons to prefer the 50g's paleface cousin over the 40gs. RPN is available just for fun, but it's not forced upon you. You can press the ALPHA key twice for ALPHA lock (on the 40gs you have to hold down the ALPHA key -- which doesn't work for the O key ... issue #33). The ALPHA keys don't conflict with the number keys, as they do on the 40gs, so you can intersperse letters and numbers in ALPHA lock mode. Your entire calculation history is available in one place -- the HOME screen. And even though the processor is only 48 Mhz versus 75 on the 40gs, most symbolic calculations are actually faster on the 48gii. And there's less difference than one would expect for exact numeric calculations (e.g. 40 seconds for 1000 factorial in exact mode on the 48gii versus 30 on the 40gs). In sum, the 48gii has inherited many generations of ROM revisions from the 48-49-50 line of HP calculators while it seems the 40gs is only two or three steps up from the original 40g. Each new ROM represents thousands of programming man hours, making the 48gii easier to use, more stable, fast, and elegant. The amazing deals from a few highly rated sellers on the hp 50g and 48gii might portend something new coming round the bend for HP. But if you do decide to order a 48gii, inquire to make sure you're getting one of the recent USB port models with 256K memory instead of 128 and four AAA batteries instead of three.
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Posted: Jun 12 2007
Order arrived in the condition I expected it to be in.
