Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good but could have been much better, 14 Jan 2008
The HP35S is a welcome return to form for HP, but ...
1. There's no communications in the HP35S unlike the 48/49/50 series, so the only way to load programs is to key them in by hand
2. The keyboard quality while OK, is nothing like as good as my old 48G or even my 1990s 32Sii. My 35S had a sticky right arrow key. Mercifully the after sales service is still good and the whole calculator was replaced within a week. The problem is not so much the absence or presence of a positive click, but rather the design and layout: I know it's a matter of taste but I dislike the arrow keys; I would prefer more space between some of the keys; and I thought the old 32Sii layout was more logical.
3. The two line display is nice, and makes RPN rather easier to understand as you can see the top two numbers in the stack instead of just the top one, but it would have been even nicer to have four lines and to be able to see the whole stack. The most irritating feature is that long numbers scroll off to the right.
4. The hex mode is very odd. In hex mode if you enter a normal number say "12" it's treated as a decimal and converted to hex ("Ch"). If you want to enter a hex value you have to add a trailing "h" by keying "blue shift, 1, 6" which is not exactly intuitive. Even more strangely you enter "ABCDEF" by using the keys labelled "HIJKLM".
5. The complex number support is welcome but oddly incomplete. For example the square root button doesn't work. If you enter "-1 SQRT" you get an error instead of "0i1", even if you enter "-1i0 SQRT" you still get an error, even though "-1i0 .5 y^x" does give you the right answer!
Overall I like it, especially the nice case it comes in, but if you want a more usable simple scientific calculator try to get hold of an old HP32Sii or 42S, and if you want a better less brain-dead design then save up for a HP50G or an old 48GX.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A modern classic, 10 Dec 2007
This is simply a great calculator - well worth the five stars and very good value for money. I have no doubt this calculator will be a modern classic and a big sales succes for HP: many serious calculator users have been waiting for this little machine.
The HP 35S can be used as an RPN calculator, which is a simple and intuitive input method traditionally used by HP. RPN is superior when compared to the awkward and error-prone input method used on most modern calculators - if you want, you can use this standard input method as well (a concession to the sales department at HP) It has many, many functions, many of which are useful and most of which are easy to access. Especially the "solve" function is much more useful than I ever anticipated: it can numerically solve a complicated equation without the need for rearranging the equation; this is a feature that I didn't know I needed until I bought the machine! The calculator is fully programmable: great fun and very powerful - but something I have had little use for upto now. The memory is quite big: plenty to keep all my useful equations in memory.
The build quality is good. The calculator is robust and has an old-fashioned, solid feel to it. The hard case is very useful: the calculator can be used without taking it out of the case. The beautiful design is both pleasing and ergonomic. The user guide is comprehensive as you would expect (and hope) for such a powerful calculator with additional material available on the HP site.
In short: the HP 35S is powerful, easy to use, sturdy, and good-looking - look no further for a serious scientific calculator.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Performance machine, 30 Jan 2009
This is an old-school sportscar among calculating machines. What I mean is, you wouldn't use it to go shopping; and you could do all the things this machine does from the comfort of a big fat expensive maths application. But as a machine for making you feel close the the road, nothing beats it. It takes a little bit of time to learn to drive. The Reverse Polish Notation option is a bit like learning to drive stick after an automatic. You have to think things through. And from that comes a real understanding of the terrain, a feeling of control.
The available functions are simple but powerful. There's a numerical integrator and an iterative solver, both of which will operate on anything you can program. The solver will have a go at any unknown in a function. The programming interface supports labelled subroutines and stepwise debugging, loops and indirect array addressing. If you're an engineer or scientist, you can fill it up with all your commonly used stuff and take it everywhere as a handy calculating reference. But it's more than that; it's a way of getting at the roots of problems, a real aid to understanding. I'm continually surprised at how it makes me think properly about stuff.
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by Timothy Gowers
