General > General Technical Chat
What's the current go-to calculator for electrical engineers?
Psi:
HP35s for me. (can use RPN or algebraic if you want, supports both)
Although I highly recommend the windows app SpeedCrunch
It's like a calculator but on steroids.
David Hess:
--- Quote from: Psi on November 03, 2021, 02:38:57 am ---HP35s for me. (can use RPN or algebraic if you want, supports both)
--- End quote ---
I like the multiline displays for the stack on the later HP RPN calculators, but the HP35s would be my next choice before an AOS calculator.
--- Quote ---Although I highly recommend the windows app SpeedCrunch
It's like a calculator but on steroids.
--- End quote ---
I don't carry my computer with me all the time, and PDA batteries do not last long enough for me to rely on them. The current style of as thin as possible has robbed portable computers of battery life. I can think of examples in the past which could operate for weeks. My HP50g operates for months, and at least uses easily changeable standard batteries.
Berni:
I stopped using dedicated calculators and now use SpeedCrunch for everything:
Typing into it using a keyboard is just as fast as a calculator, does all the usual things you would do on a scientific calculator, and i can copy paste numbers in and out of it.
My only gripe with it is that it does not take SI prefixes so instead of "k" you have to use the usual "e3"
EDIT:
Actually i found a way to make it take SI perfixes. You just have to type m=1e-3, u=1e-6, n=1e-9...etc into it and it will remember it as a variable, then typing in 3u will result in 3e-6 . This is thanks to its lenient parsing where it won't be picky about extra or missing spaces, missing operators, mixed comma and dot decimals, space separated thousands etc... and will just interpret what you typed in the most sensible way. Tho its still not quite proper because it doesn't give it higher order priority than division, so typing 1/2u results in in 500e-9
IanB:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on November 02, 2021, 09:55:40 pm ---I am pretty sure you can't touch-type the shift-key'd cosine function on the PC though, so you're looking at the keyboard for that
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I can, actually, touch-type all the keys on my keyboard, including all the punctuation keys.
Just_another_Dave:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on November 02, 2021, 09:55:40 pm ---
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on November 02, 2021, 08:05:41 pm ---
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on November 02, 2021, 07:24:43 pm ---
--- Quote ---Same here. Using tools on computer is much more comfortable and powerful these days.
--- End quote ---
They are, but suffer from the same issue that oscilloscopes on a PC have: there is nothing like stabbing actual buttons. I can type in a problem on a calculator far quicker than I can point to the keys on a PC,
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Uh. A computer keyboard is infinitely more comfortable and faster to type on than any calculator's keyboard, unless your computer keyboard is utter crap, in which case, ditch it.
But seriously, if you can type faster on a calculator, good for you. I've never seen that except maybe for old people these days - maybe you are, and that's ok!
--- End quote ---
I think it's not that simple. Yes, a computer keyboard is faster to type on, but you're either looking at the keyboard or the screen. I am pretty sure you can't touch-type the shift-key'd cosine function on the PC though, so you're looking at the keyboard for that (assuming you can remember where it is). On the calculator it's a one-finger stab job (better for not getting digits out of order) and you can see all of the keys and all of the screen at the same time.
And, like I said, you're not interrupting whatever you were doing on the PC - switching to the calculator app then back to whatever it was and making sure the cursor is still where it was is not an instantaneous thing and probably takes longer than the calculation.
--- End quote ---
I find useful graphic calculators (or a tablet) when I’m working on a prototype, as I don’t usually have space in the bench to fit a laptop. As the hp prime has an app similar to excel sheets, I can annotate measurements with it and then import them to the computer without having to copy them manually from a handbook
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