HP35 vs. HP33

33 is a POS IMHO! Gave mine away and bought a 35. Seemed like the 33 keys weren't "crisp" and I didn't care for the key arrangement. 35 reminds me (however slightly!) of the old 32Sii.

-JD-

Do a search, there was a recent post with plenty of contributory opinions.

Ralph

Ditto on the search for the earlier discussion.

HP35 all the way.

Thanks for the quick responses!

I'll do the search, and I think HP35 wins =)

I keep a 33 on me at all times. It makes good toilet paper if you find yourself in a fix.

I have and use both. The HP35s with my students, the HP33s in my office, and a HP42s at home. I also have the emulator that runs in Windows, and use it to project the emulated HP35s when demonstrating.

The 35s does have much better key action.

I provide simple programs to my students and some of them write their own.

I use them both. For testing the 35 is easier to program and I believe has more memory. I still use my 33 for basic calcs, because I've used it for the last several years. Just a comfort zone thing. The 35 is a much better calculator. After testing the 42 is probably a better choice. I still have my 48 with a SMI Cogo card also. Although it just sits in my bag most often.

I had one of each. The 33 didn't even seem like a HP style calculator. IMHO the 35 will be much better in a surveying situation.

I am going to offer a contrary view, and say "it depends". It depends on how you use your calculator and if you are going to rely on programs to do some fundamental things like polar to rectanglur and think about if you will have reliable access to those programs in the exam environment or if something happens and you lose your programs.

Here is something I posted a year or so ago:

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"As to the display, early 33s' had a problem (invisible decimal point) but that has been fixed for years so unless you were buying a used one, not a problem. As far as I can tell the 35s display and the 33s are the same now.

Also for some people who learned to use polarrectangular from the keyboard, the HP-35s does not have those. For that reason I would use a 33s for a test, not wanting to rely on programming for everything.

I am surprised no one mentioned that.

The 35S would be more powerful to program since it allows more access to memory registers and also better branching to sub programs, whereas the 33s was severely constrained by the limited number of 'labels'.

But if you're not programming, there isn't that much difference!

There are several annoying things on the 35s. Since there are fewer keys more functions have been moved underground to menu selections piled on other keys. So it often takes several more keystrokes to do simple things. A similar example is the program access via the XEQ key.

On the 33S and my earlier similar calculators you can put a routine on a letter label like "A" "B" "T" and so forth and run them with a simple 2 keystroke sequence XEQ A. Now the new method while adding much flexibility in programming requires more keystrokes since you have to enter XEQ A 000 or at best XEQ A ENTER.

Keyboard layout is also radically changed. (not a problem unless you are switching)

For years many HP programmable calculators had 5 keys wide at the top and special significance could be assigned to A B C D and E. This goes back to the HP-65 through the 33S. Now there are only 4 wide on the top row with special arrow and function keys being placed to the right.

Oh well, they are all different.

If you are going to go into a test with a calculator you are not familiar with, it will not really be the calculators fault. If you learned and drilled yourself on how to use the 35s then it would be best. If you were more familiar with the older line of HP calculators absent a program, I think you would find the 33s easier to master.

Personally I would not want to rely on programming at all, but my ability to solve basic problems from the keyboard.

For that reason if I had to do it today, I would use a 33s.

Looks should not be a factor over ease of use and familiarity. If you have used a 41c or a 15c or many of the earlier generation of HP I think the 33s would be easier to pick up and tackle a problem with once you figured out where the functions are.
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So in the end it is how suitable are they for what you are trying to do. Also I do not find the keys to be all that bad on the 33s, i.e. I never really noticed a problem.

>
> Also for some people who learned to use polarrectangular from the keyboard, the HP-35s does not have those. For that reason I would use a 33s for a test, not wanting to rely on programming for everything.
>
> I am surprised no one mentioned that.

I mentioned that on the previous thread.

[msg=124211]RPN Thread[/msg]

I was hoping he'd use the search function as suggested above.

Ralph