Re:The good, the bad, the ugly and the pretty-prin (Score 1)

HPs: - If you know how to use your calc, RPN is not faster (or slower - Less multilevel menus ??? not in my expirience, but it depends on the calc. - Flash applications let you do some of the same thing as the HP expansions would. I have however never seen anyone actually use them, the ones I have seen were not useful for most engineers. - The HP can do pretty print TIs: - Inefficient ???? Just as fast as RPN if you know fow to use them. For some tasks I find that the TI92/TI89 is a lot faster than the HP. - In my expirience there are plenty of HPs around university campuses - Symbolic manimulation can improve your results on exames, but you have to use it right. Your expirince: YOur example shows that you friends does not know how to use their calc, but has nothing to do with which calc to buy. As the only TI(92) user among HP48 users I have had the exact opposit exirience. (After they saw how powerful the TI92 they have all switch to TI92s :-)) What calculators people use in busnisses is that relevant here. Most people I have talked who use calc in their profession use HPs, but they have no idea what TI calculators can do. A long time ago HP was the only choice, so that was what they bought, and they have not really followed the advanced in calcs since then. So they believe that HPs are the best, but they normally do not know what the choices are. Once you are out of university you normally wont need the big calc any more, and a TI68 would be enough for most people. I discussed calculators with a working enginner not long ago, who after learning what the TIs where capable of felt "sorry" that HP had not kept up their leed :-) If symbolic manipulation is used right i can be helpful, but of course it can be used in a bad way. This is however the base for a lot of the functions which graphing calculators have (I did learn linear algebra and have a calc with rref function with out suffering too much :-)) All in all, you post indicate that you really have used Tis all that much. If you sit down and read the manual for your calc, and spend some time learning to use it, HPs and TIs will be app. equally fast. Dines