My Ideal Calculator is Impossible

[Howard Owen]

I think that each of us has a unique idea of what the "ideal" calculator would be. I also think we all probably realize that out ideal machines are unlikely to materialize in the real world. Another reason why my ideal machine can't happen has just occurred to me. I enjoy the machines themselves a great deal. But that enjoyment would be sterile without a community of more-or-less like minded enthusiasts such as this one. My ideal calculator is impossible precisely because it is my ideal. If I had the only one in the world, I couldn't share the fun of using the darned thing.

Thanks for being here, everyone.

Regards,
Howard

[DaveJ]

Quote:

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I think that each of us has a unique idea of what the "ideal" calculator would be. I also think we all probably realize that out ideal machines are unlikely to materialize in the real world. Another reason why my ideal machine can't happen has just occurred to me. I enjoy the machines themselves a great deal. But that enjoyment would be sterile without a community of more-or-less like minded enthusiasts such as this one. My ideal calculator is impossible precisely because it is my ideal. If I had the only one in the world, I couldn't share the fun of using the darned thing.

Thanks for being here, everyone.

Regards,
Howard

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Well said Howard.
I've never found my ideal calculator either, and the practical design engineer side of me says I never will either, as my "ideal" also changes depending upon how I want to use it.

For instance, sometimes I just want the smallest and simplest calc I can get as I'm always moving around. Other times I want one optimised for my electronics calculations, so I want all the commonly used keys (including parallel) as main buttons. Then when I want to do some repetitive calculations I want a nice easy to use and edit solver, and the list just go's on and on...
No wonder I have 3 calculator in my draw at work...

As someone who is currently designing and building their own calculator, I've lost count of the number of times I've changed the design and had to reluctantly accept various practical trade-off's. And I'm only trying to please myself! I'll be happy if everyone just says, "hey, that's cool!".

Dave.

[Paul Fox]

Hey! Thats cool Dave.

My ideal calculator is the rubbish TI I had when i was 8? When the calculator was powered by pure magic and I got to type:

1 + 1 = = = = = = = = etc

Since then, as a techie, i know how they work and I want to discover more and more stuff but in the end find I have no use for any of it :-(

My ideal calculator is beginning to look like the RAON Everun machine - a big fat PDA which happens to run XP (yuck!) but for w-hich i can run any app i care to install - maths, reading, web, games etc, and be able to use whilst out shopping with the wife (outside changing rooms), and have that "Eureka!" moment where i can tell my wife about how to draw cool 3D graphs of temperature vs voltage, and she will just say "Gee! Sure! Whatever!" ...

:-)