Hi community
As a collector of vintage calculators from the 70's I'm usually disappointed by the common Kinpo and co calculators of this century. You know them all, these HP-30S, TI-30X IIS, Canon, Casio, Karce et al stuff.
But this night I made a great discovery !
I started to disassemble a brand new released calculator and - believe it or not - it is made in China AND brought all the memories of the HP-35 and SR-50 back.
WHY ???
Because it is the best engineered calculator I discovered the past 10 years.
Let me start point by point before blowing the fog away:
1. It looks great and feels heavy.
2. The keyboard makes a crisp click with a precise feedback.
3. The calculating precision is much better than expected.
More details:
The housing is made of two shells, the upper one is covered with a thick, brushed aluminium sheet metal. This wonderful faceplate is partly polished.
The lower half of the shell hides the 4 screws under large rubber pads like you know it from your lovely HP's.
Inside the lower shell are two huge pieces of metal to give the calculator a strong weight.
The keyboard uses a well known technology, too. Every key is composed of a small disk spring and a (unfortunately not double shot) molded plastic key.
Internal calculations are based on 13-digit which are rounded to a 10-digit result on the bright display. Running Mike Sebastian's calculator forensics gives a result with a really small error (8.999 999 999 xxx).
Since the HP-33S necessary to mention: The display sports good comma and thousands separators...
The calculator is still behind the fog ? I purchased mine last week at a Staples for about $60 - the name plate: TI BA II Plus Professional.
BUY AND ENJOY !!!
Regards,
Joerg
