Hi everybody, I was messing around with some old machines last night and thought I would see which one ran the fastest. The results were a bit surprising to me. The three machines were a 15c, 34c, and 29c. I put three different types of identical programs into each machine (one that had many calls to subroutines, one that was just a simple counting loop, and one that was just a string of transcendental functions back to back). I was careful to put the programs in the same relative position within program memory in all three machines as well.

Now the (surprizing) results...the 29C outran the other two machines in all three types of programs! I wouldn't have expected the oldest machine to (apparently) run the fastest. Is this because the 29c has a smaller ROM menu, and fewer program lines to search, or does it indeed run faster? Comments please. Thanks, Hal

I was as surprised as yourself when I discovered the HP11C being significantly slower than my HP29C. I've understood by this forum that the Voyager series was designed to last a life time on a set of batteries (at the cost of speed). Perhaps because it was the first series to run on batteries (ignoring the Woodstocks could run on penlights as well), HP might have thought that the user mustn't be bothered with changing expensive batteries within some years after purchase of the calculator. Obviously a matter of choice.

It's somewhat strange that the Spices are slower than Woodstock. I can't think of a reason for that.