Hi all,
Now that I have so many calculators emulated on my Ipaq (namely: 41CX, 12C, 15C, 10BII, 42S, 28S, 27S, 17BII, 48GX, 49G) !, I had to select one for daily use...
The winner is: the 28S !! The emulation through Emu42 and Erik's nice bitmap and KML is very nice and makes the best use of the PocketPC screen; the major reproaches to the 28S (not optimized for one-hand holding, horrible battery compartment, lack of I/O, poor display) are irrelevant to the emulator, which fits both sides of the 28S nicely on the screen, which a clear, readable, full-size display. I can easily load text strings, objects, and create multiple instances of the calc.
I also found out that I liked it better for simple use than the 48: the 28 has many of the 48 features, but is simpler, with a less crowded keyboard, has catalogs, a display that is actually larger than the 48 (it can fit one more character, and display as many stack lines as the 48 using the 'toggle' button). Program editing is easier with the dedicated arrow keys in alpha mode. It is most sufficient for what I do, i.e. play with RPL and makes standards computation, plus equation solving. I don't care about large graphics, I/O (this is addressed by the PocketPC), time functions (the PocketPC does a better job than the 48 at that !), equation editor (ironacally, the 28S is faster with its 'FORM' menu than the 48 with its fancy equation editor). I would like a matrix editor, though, but not that often - the infinite stack + ->ARRAY command can create a matrix pretty efficienly.
I like it also better than the 42, for its equation feature, and better than the 27S, for its direct alpha keyboard.
I rediscovered RPL and I am surprised to see that, unlike a commun opinion here ("RPL is heavier than RPN and forces you to learn an overkill object-oriented languages"), RPL does actually uses less keystrokes than RPN for common operations such as loops. The use of 'FOR NEXT' structures, I believe, is actually more intuitive for newcommers to programming that labels, counters and gotos...
Plus, the feeling to use the classy pioneer of RPL machines.
All in all - surprising that the "winner" is what this underrated calc, perceived as cute, but more as a prototype of the 48.
Anybody agrees ? :)
Cheers,
Vincent