hi
thanks for the replies, i shall get my friend in frisco to order me a 33 from walmart for 49 bucks, she wont know if its the latest screen or not, i will get it out of curiousity, and charge it to my company, so does walmart stock the latest as i write or is there old stock around with the smaller pixals
i often dream of driving around australia and the states looking at all the pawn shops getting old hps, i did get a 48 in boulder once for 40 usd and a 15c in oz for 30 bucks
a funny thing ,when i first arrived in denver i would stop old people and ask for the nearest pawn shop not realising that my accent sounded like PORN shop, hence not many people helped me.
i was in the office in taiwan the other day, couldnt see the lake 500 yards away, went to run out and get the survey gear thinking it was rain arriving and then i realised it was air pollution moving in.
cheers
david

David,

I had a look at the HP-33S recently at a Frys in San Jose. They had the models with both the larger and smaller decimal point.

I noticed that the models with the smaller decimal point were packaged with two manuals - one in French and one in English. The models with the larger decimal point were only packaged with the English manual.

I'm not sure that this is the case for all HP-33S's out there, but you may increase your chances of getting a model with the larger decimal point by ask your friend to make sure that there is only one manual, in English, in the blister pack.

Hope this helps,

Eamonn.

I have two HP-33S calculators, one with the old display and one with the new display. They both came with a single English manual. Besides the display, the only noticeable difference is the serial number. On the old model, the serial number is stamped into the plastic. On the new model, the serial number is printed on an adhesive label.

I've got one of each. The newer display is really not much better than the old. They tried to make the decimal point and comma larger, but not at the expense of shoving aside the digit pixels on either side.

It's as if they tried to make do without major alterations to the "mask" (or whatever) used to manufacture the LCD. As a result, the d.p., when viewed in isolation, is indeed larger. But when squeezed between two digits (especially, between two 2's, as in "2.2") it disappears as readily as it did before -- maybe even more so.

I wouldn't waste a drop of sweat over it: either way it's THE major problem with the model. (Even more so, IMHO, than the weird keyboard, if you can believe that!)

Other than the decimal point, the HP-33s is a fun unit to use, and it's reassuring to have an almost-shirt-pocket portable RPN programmable available once more.

Out of curiousity, what are the serial numbers of your old vs. new 33s?

The old one is "CNA41204367". The new one is "CNA43508279".