HP- 3. 5s Scientific Calculator Review. The HP- 3. 5s Calculator. Looking Backward to Move Forward. The HP- 3. 5s calculator is a 3. HP- 3. 5 calculator. The HP- 3. 5 was the first hand- held scientific calculator, and a revolutionary device in its time. The HP- 3. 5s is much more than a simple retro look back at the past triumphs of Hewlett- Packard.
It's a design for the working professional, a market that has been practically forgotten by calculator manufacturers in the face of the rise of the microcomputer and the growth of the educational market for high end calculators at ever lower grade levels. Before I go into all that, let's look at the HP- 3. What's in the Box, and What's Not.
I've seen the HP- 3. Both are vacuum- formed "bubble" packs, one larger, one smaller. Both include the calculator itself, a quick start guide, a manual on CD, and a case for the calculator. The case seems to differ between the two packages, with the larger one containing a rather solid "hard" case, and the smaller package appears to contain a soft- sided case. The very substantial HP- 3. What is not in the package is the full printed manual.
This is an important part of any calculator as capable and complex as the HP- 3. It has a manual in PDF format on the CD, but a printed manual makes learning the features of the calculator much easier. Fortunately, all it takes to get a printed manual is calling and asking for it. Hidden in the back of the quick start guide, under Additional Resources, is the statement that if you simply call HP and ask for a printed manual they'll send you one.
They're true to their word. I called and received a manual free of any charges, delivered by UPS only two days after I requested it. I had started working my way through the calculator's features with the PDF file on my laptop. Once I got the printed manual I was able to move through it about three times as fast. Inevitable Comparisons. It's obvious that the new HP- 3.
HP- 3. 5. A comparison to recent scientific calculators from HP and other manufacturers is also logical. For many HP calculator users, it is also logical to compare it to HP's other classics, such as the HP- 6. HP- 6. 7, HP- 4. 1C, and HP- 4. I have been a user of the HP- 4. C series on practically a daily basis since 1.
Likewise, over the past several years I have been looking for a calculator to replace or supplement my HP- 4. I have used calculators from HP, Texas Instruments, Casio and Sharp in my quest for my next calculator. What It Is, and What It Isn't. The HP- 3. 5s is a dramatic update to the original HP- 3. The original HP- 3.
While some early calculators called themselves a "scientific" model with nothing more than the basic four functions and a square root key, the HP- 3. It had trigonometric functions, inverse trig finctions ("arc" sine, cosine, etc.) It could raise a number to an arbitrary power, change sign, invert, and do logs, natural logs, and antilogarithms. Plus, it had a memory to store intermediate or constant values. True to its name, it had 3. Most of the keys had a single function, with some having two functions (trig and logarithm keys, for example.)It used HP's famous Reverse Polish Notation (RPN), giving it the equivalent of four additional memories in its stack compared to a standard algebraic calculator, and a simplicity of operation comparable to an arithmetic calculator. It had standard and scientific display modes.
- Ideal for college students, engineers, surveyors, and medical personnel, the HP 35s scientific calculator offers calculation versatility in one economical unit.
- The HP-35s Calculator Looking Backward to Move Forward. The HP-35s calculator is a 35th anniversary tribute to the original HP-35 calculator. The HP-35 was the first.
- The HP 35s was designed by Hewlett-Packard in conjunction with Kinpo Electronics of Taiwan, which manufactures the calculator for HP in mainland China.
The HP- 3. 5s of today does far, far more than this. Most of its 4. 3 keys serve four functions. Aside from the classic scientific functions, it adds probability, statistics, complex and vector functions, and integration functions.
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The most significant addition compared to the original HP- 3. It has a generous amount of memory that can be used for programs and large data sets. And this is where the HP- 3. HP's past. The programming system is very much like that of the HP- 6. The memory in the HP- 3. So programs can be much longer and more involved. The HP- 3. 5s has built- in data types well beyond what the old calculators featured, including 2- D and 3- D vectors, complex numbers and polar coordinates.
Unlike the older calculators, the HP- 3. And, unlike the 4. The result is that there has been criticism of the HP- 3.
Realistically, though, this is an HP- 3. HP- 3. 5 at that. A comparison to an HP- 4. HP- 4. 2 is extremely unfair, and in spite of its expanded memory, programming, and calculation features it's also unfair to compare it to the 6. A more apt comparison would be the recent HP- 3. HP- 3. 3 models. The HP- 3.
I got one of these as a free add- on to the purchase of an HP printer. It was worth almost as much as I paid for it. I still have it, and it was my constant inspiration to seek a better calculator.
Every time I used it. The HP- 3. 3 is a far more capable machine.
It's very similar to the HP- 3. It's programmable, has RPN, supports complex types, and so on. Unfortunately it's in a package I consider unusable. Its keyboard was designed too look good in a package, not to be used. The HP- 3. 3 calculator keyboard's shape, response, and layout all drove me off in spite of the internals. It has a terrible inverted chevron shape, and mushy flat lump keys that run one into another.
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It's also fragile. All very poor qualities for a professional's tool. The HP- 3. 5s as What it Is. My own impression of the HP- 3.
I'm really happy with it. I'm a working engineer, I do mechanical, electrical, and electronic design.
I also do performance, reliability, and safety analysis as part of my design work. This calculator does what I need. The addition of complex and vector data types simplifies things for me considerably.
On my HP- 4. 1CV and CX, I use programs to be able to deal with such values. The HP- 3. 5s supports them directly. I'll admit that not all the functions I would like to have built in for dealing with these values are built in on the HP- 3. HP- 4. 1. The probability and statistics functions are similar to those on my HP- 4.
The enlarged memory means that I can deal with larger data sets than on the 4. I deal with matrices of about 2. I can go up to four times as large on the HP- 3. I'm unlikely to go quite so large, in part because of the effect such a large data space would have on program memory. Really large data sets are better handled on a regular computer, but where a large set of values are needed in an intermediate calculation prior to reduction down to a few results, the HP- 3.
Physical Design. The return of some of the design principles of the earlier HP calculators is a very welcome thing. The keys are clearly marked. They feel good, you can tell what's going on when you press them. I was concerned that the HP- 3. HP- 4. 1 series, but in use this has turned out not to be the case. The layout is not perfect, but it is logical and I've not had any problems adapting to it.
I routinely go back and forth between it and my HP- 4. CV and CX without problems. The calculator is a bit wide, compared to the older calculators, but it is also lighter and not as deep. I would like to see it lose about 4- 5mm of width, but it is not a problem to hold and use for long sessions. I find it is more comfortable to grip it a bit higher on the case than my older calculators, as its center of gravity is higher up than the older units. The raised edges on each side of the keypad serve their function of protecting the keys from inadvertant presses.
The number of functions, and the colors used on the keys add a bit of complexity- -I found shifting my eyes from looking at the yellow labels to the ones in blue when looking for a function to be difficult, at first. I've adapted to it, it was no more trouble to get used to this than it was to get used to seeing the different functions of each key when I started using the HP- 4. C over 2. 5 years ago. Keeping a fair comparison between a new calculator and one I've been using most of my life is difficult, but fortunately I kept notes when I was learning the HP- 4. CX, they've helped me maintain some perspective. In toto, as a hard core user of classic HP calculators, and a working professional, I really like using the HP- 3. HP- 3. 5s Keyboard and Display.
Conclusions. The HP- 3. Both inside and outside, it's a solid tool. It does not have all the functions of a high end calculator, but given its price and positioning in HP's line these are not to be expected. It's an excellent value for the price, I paid a retail price at a brick and mortar store, it can be gotten cheaper from online merchants. I wanted to see it 'in person' first.)The HP- 3.
I've heard complaints from civil engineers who find the functions of the HP- 3. Assuming you can stand the HP- 3. For myself, as a mechanical and electronic engineer I find the HP- 3. I want to do far better than anything else on the market at present. It does everything I'd want to do on a calculator that's short of what I'd want to model on a full computer system. Blue Sky Thoughts.
I hope HP looks to this design and their other past designs when designing new high end calculators. A rework of the HP- 5. HP- 3. 5s would be very welcome.
There are a number of features I'd like to see beyond what the HP- 3. Data transfer ability built in. Card readers are old tech, nowadays; a USB port and Micro- SD should be part of a larger system. Maybe even Bluetooth or Wi. Fi as options. I'd pay for it.
Alphanumeric abilities like the HP- 4. CX. There's plenty of call for this in larger, more complex programs. Yes, an inbuilt text editor, too.
I'd use it. Expand data types to include physical units. Meters, ohms, grams, you name it. Allow calculations on units alone, as well as on scalar values with attached units, and vectors with units. Conduct automatic unit conversions by switching between unit modes. E. g., changing from English units to cgs would automatically display all values in cgs terms.