HP 50g Graphing Calculator

by HP

• New display upgrade--the new HP 50g display features a 30% increase in usable space over the HP 49g+
• New powerful SD card slot allows you to format your card right in the calculator and expand memory
• Massive 2.5 MB total memory--512 KB RAM plus 2 MB flash ROM for performing future upgrades**
• New larger equation library and 2300+ built-in functions--ideal for both professionals and students
• The choice of efficient RPN, Textbook or Algebraic data entry

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 1 x 3.5 inches ; 9.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000GTPRPS
• Item model number: HP50G
• Batteries 4 AAA batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (362 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #4 in Electronics > Office Electronics > Calculators > Graphing
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com

The new HP 50g Graphing Calculator provides optimum power, flexibility and connectivity for math, science, and engineering professionals, as well as college students. Featuring a more capable SD card slot, 2.5 MB total memory (512 KB, 2 MB Flash ROM), RS232 and USB connectivity, and a built-in intelligent editor,

A large, high-contrast display clearly shows every important part of a formula, calculation, or graph.

The 50g boasts expansive memory, thanks to an SD card slot. View larger.

this system gives you more capabilities than ever before. Compact, portable, and simple to operate, the 50g features a 30 percent increase in usable space over the HP 49g, and handles complex computations with ease.

Powerful, Innovative Design For Fast, Accurate Computation
The 50g features easy-to-use, powerful tools that students and professionals can rely on for years of performance, including built-in graphing functions, constants, and applications. This calculator also offers built-in lessons and step-by-step problem solving examples to help illustrate abstract concepts. Choose between efficient RPN (Reverse Polish Notation), Textbook, or Algebraic data entry and rest assured that expansive memory (with SD card slot) means the 50g can handle even the most complex calculations. Graphing features include 2-D function, polar, and parametric plot, as well as 3-D, differential equation, and bar plot.

The 50g's large, high-contrast display with adjustable font type and size clearly shows every important part of a formula, calculation, or graph so you'll be able to clearly read and analyze your results. In addition, you can isolate and evaluate sub-expressions using the intelligent editor, while also cutting, pasting and copying objects as needed. Finally, the large equation library and over 2,300 built-in functions make this calculator ideal for both professionals and students.

What's in the Box
50G graphing calculator, batteries, user's manual, CD (connectivity software and advanced user's guide), USB cable, and premium pouch.

Product Description

The new HP 50g Graphing Calculator provides the best in power, flexibility and connectivity for math, science and engineering professionals and college students. It now features a more capable SD card slot, 2.5 MB total memory, new RS232 and USB connectivity and a built-in intelligent editor that gives you more capability than ever before.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

284 of 295 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Significant improvement but... August 30, 2006

By Dr. Stuart Gitlow TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Amazon Verified Purchase

It's 10/5/06 and I'm editing this review right up front with the first paragraph, because this little calc has a problem that I hadn't noticed initially. The new HP keys, as I describe below, are great. They have a solid click and a good rollover ability - meaning that you can push the number 1, then push the number 2 before letting go of the 1 entirely, and you'll still get "12" on the screen. That's perfect. Here's the downside: Rapidly enter the number "1100." Click-click-click-click. And yet my screen says "10." Why? Because a rapid double-click of a numeric key results in the calculator noticing only the first click. If a typewriter worked that way, I'd be attending metings every day instead of meetings.

**UPDATE - 10/14/06** One of the commands available, not documented in the 50g material, but documented for several earlier HP calculators, is a KEYTIME command. Quite simply, replacing the default keytime with "500" eliminates missed keystrokes. This corrects the problem I described above.

And now back to my original review:

First, the keypad issue has been addressed with this model, and each key has a feel that is similar to the HP41 - just about perfect for data entry without needing to look at the keypad. Now all that's necessary is for HP to return to the complex keys that allowed for print both on the top surface and the beveled edge; that would allow for some improvement in the user interface. But overall this is a major step forward from the HP49 line.

Next, the display is bright and legible with good contrast. These multiline displays still aren't quite as good as the single line displays from years past in terms of visibility at odd angles but we're coming close. There's plenty of information here with a seven line stack in the default mode.

The manual is where the calculator loses a star. While the new manual is an improvement over the HP48/49 series (though it has less information, it is more understandable), it is nowhere near as complete and useful as the HP41 series manuals were. HP needs to bring back a well-written manual series with use of color, high-end paper, and quality typesetting. For example, the calculator comes with a user's manual; on page 1-20, it says that additional references can be found in Chapter 1 and Appendix C of the calculator's user's guide. What user's guide? They don't mean the manual since that doesn't have any Appendices (or an index, for that matter). Where would I get the user's guide? Then I discover that it is included, and is on the CD-ROM in pdf form. Apparently it is a larger version of the user's manual, with additional information, including an index. Much of the information in the Guide is duplicated from the Manual - but we still don't have complete programming and functional command discussion. Don't get me wrong - everything you need for standard operations is here; but if you really want to get into the capabilities of the calculator (and that's why you're spending $129, right?), we want the full manual. Oh, and bring back the manuals that are spiral-bound so we don't have to weigh the book down with something each time we turn to the calculator to try something.

Here too is a connectivity kit of software, none of which runs on my Mac. I tried plugging it in to the Mac using the standard USB connecting cable (included) but nothing happened. Since I didn't buy the HP with any need to hook it up to my Mac, it's not a problem, but what good is connectivity if noone bothered with the Mac software?

There are a few little nits that still need to be picked. For example, the stack is right justified but data entry is left justified. It is much easier to quickly review an entered number and compare it to numbers on the stack if they are similarly justified. The enter key needs to return to double-width just above the numeric portion of the keypad, and HP should finally pick a standard numeric/operator layout and stick with it. The HP41 had the major operators on the left. The HP48 put them on the right and changed the sequence. The HP50 keeps them on the right but bumped them all up by one key. For those of us who essentially touch-type on calculators, this relearning is a pain.

I must admit that if HP simply rebuilt the HP41C series with more memory, they'd have a clear winner. And given the prices that those models sell for on eBay in new condition, HP could clearly do well with such a product.

The connectivity issue would have cost another star, but the overall build quality, computing capabilities, programming capabilities, and incorporation of RPN on the 50g make it clearly worth 4 stars.

143 of 148 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Why the HP-50g October 29, 2011

By mrodriguez

Amazon Verified Purchase

Why I Like the 50g

* The Controversy

If you google "TI v. HP" you can find dozens of discussions by partisans of both brands of
calculators arguing for the relative merits of the their favorite model. These days, the two models
under discussion are the TI-89 from Texas Instruments and the HP-50g from Hewlett-Packard. Almost
inevitably, the discussion goes straight into whether the Algebraic or RPN entry method is better.

I can summarize the argument pretty quickly: "RPN saves one or two keystrokes." "Maybe, but
Algebraic is easier to learn---it's just like the way you would write it." From there, someone might
mention the number of built in functions for each, 850 versus 820, or the speed of solving an
integral, 1.2 versus 1.1 seconds.

I find these arguments almost completely irrelevant to the things that draw me to a calculator, and
I tire at their repetition. I will put my cards on the table right now. I far prefer the HP50g for
reasons I will discuss in a second. I own a TI-89 and the really cooler TI-92 plus with the full
alphabetic keyboard, and they are both fantastic calculators. But the HP-50g is "fun" in a way
that's hard to explain in a post. It is *not* RPN, or at least not RPN in isolation from the whole
ecosystem of the HP-50g, that makes it fun.

* The Stack

I don't know why but the HP's stack hardly ever figures into these discussions, yet to me, it is the
indispensable facility of the HP-50g that gives it its elegance. You probably have some idea of what
a stack is, but if you don't the concept is easy, but powerful. The stack is a pile of numbers that
sit on the calculator that can be removed only from the "top" of the stack, which in the HP is
actually displayed at the bottom. Here, for example, is what the stack might look at somewhere in
the middle of a calculation:

7:
6:
5:
4:
3: 5
2: 3.5
1: 9

The number 9 is on the "top" of the stack, position "1", labeled at the left. Further up the stack
are 3.5 and 5, while the rest of the stack is empty. If I enter another number, say, 6.7, it gets
"pushed" onto the top of the stack and all the other numbers get bumped up into the next higher
position. Like this:

7:
6:
5:
4: 5
3: 3.5
2: 9
1: 6.7

The stack serves as a kind of universal input-output facility for the calculator. All of the
functions, and I mean *all* the functions, take arguments from the stack and---here's the important
part---they push their results back onto the stack, starting at position 1, the "top."

The '-' key, for example performs subtraction, a function that takes two arguments. Where does it
get its arguments from? The top two numbers on the stack, of course. And it applies the
subtraction to them in the same order that you see them, in this case it will compute '9 - 6.7'.
Where will it put the result, 2.3? On the top of the stack, of course. After pushing the '-' key,
the stack becomes:

7:
6:
5:
4:
3: 5
2: 3.5
1: 2.3

This regular, predictable behavior gives the HP50g an interactive feel that allows you to "play"
with the numbers more that CALCULATE. You're not Spock, after all, you probably want to fiddle with
a problem a bit. You can stop, contemplate, perform a side calculation, and when you're done, the
stack will return to where it was when you left off the main problem. Say you have 45 on the stack,
and are thinking of taking its sine. As you ponder the problem, you realize that you really want
that 45, which you've been regarding as degrees, converted to radians before you take its sine.
These sorts of mid-course corrections are just what the stack is made for. You remember that to get
this done, you have to divide by 180, then multiply by pi. Simple, just enter 180 / pi *, and you've
got your radians. Now you can get back to the problem of taking the sine (just press the [SIN] key,
and there it is on the stack for you to think about and operate on further.

The stack on the HP-50g (and the 49g and the 48g and the 28s, etc) has an unlimited depth, so you
can push numbers onto it to whatever depth the problem at hand requires up to the limit of available
memory, and I for one, have never found the end of memory on the 50g. This contrasts with earlier
HP's that had a stack that was limited to 4 numbers, usually with only two of them visible. On the
50g, up to seven elements are visible, and you can look at the rest by hitting the cursor key to go
up as far as your curiosity takes you. The TI calculators don't have a stack. They have a history,
which is nice, it allows you to go up and re-enter an expression, but it lacks that spontaneous
push-pop play of the stack.

* Now RPN

Don't get me wrong, RPN---Reverse Polish Notation---is a great way to think about numbers and
operating on them. But all by itself, it's just a bit more efficient in keystroke count (who cares,
already!) and strikes many people (as it did me) as a kind of backwards way of looking at a
problem. But, when combined with the stack, you really get to understand the power and
expressiveness of the RPN way of operating on numbers.

To get into the spirit of RPN, it helps to first understand PN, Polish Notation. Consider the
following nested expression:

SIN(3 * 8 - COS(4 / 7)) - 17

This is in normal, algebraic form, pretty much just like you would enter it into a TI calculator.
But the expression can be rewritten so that every operation is regarded as a function that is placed
in front of its operators in parentheses, just like we do already with functions like sin(x), where
the function name goes in front of its parenthesized argument. But in Polish Notation, even things
like '+' and '-' are regarded as functions, so that '3+2' would be written '+(3, 2)'. Now, if we
re-write the above expression this way, we get this:

-(SIN( -( *(3, 8), COS( /(4, 7)))), 17)

That's Polish Notation, or prefix notation. Each function is written at the front of the
parentheses that surround its arguments. The idea of Reverse Polish Notation is that the function
could go *after* the parentheses that surround its arguments just as well. So, '3+2' could be
written '(3,2)+'. Now, our complicated expression looks like this:

((((3, 8)*, ((4, 7)/)COS)-)SIN, 17)-

Now here, finally, is the punch line. Using this Reverse Polish, or postfix, notation, we can erase
all the commas and all the parentheses:

3 8 * 4 7 / COS - SIN 17 -

As long as we (and the calculator) know how many arguments each function takes, this expression is
completely unambiguous. With algebraic notation, we needed parentheses to specify the order of
operations. As it turns out, *any* expression can be written in RPN without parentheses to specify
the order of operations and without any ambiguity. Furthermore, we can enter the expression strictly
left-to-right.

But the real pay-off is that this notation is perfectly suited to working with the stack. See, we
push 3 and 8 onto the stack then press '*', which pops 3 and 8 from the stack and pushes 24 onto the
stack. Then we push 4 and 7 onto the stack, hit the divide key, and the 4 and 7 get popped from the
stack while 0.571428571429 gets pushed onto the stack. Hit COS, and 0.999950266956 goes onto the
stack (replacing the 0.57...), and our 24 gets pushed up. Then, '-' gives 23.000049733, SIN gives
0.390731927492, we push 17, then '-' and -16.6092680725 is sitting on the stack ready for any
further calculation.

Yes, yes, the RPN notation is only 11 keystrokes, while the algebraic is 15, saving a whopping 4
keystrokes, all parentheses and commas, but that's not the beauty of RPN. RPN shines because it
works with the stack, and the stack gives you a visible, interactive, and universal mechanism for
reading inputs and writing outputs. Only the HP calculators sport this combination of a stack and
RPN.

* Elegant Programming

Having a stack and a notation that takes advantage of it were enough to sell me on the HP-50g all by
themselves. But, since both the HP-50g and the TI-89 are *programmable* calculators, it is really
important to know what kind of programming environment each provides. Here is where the HP really
rockets ahead. I have owned both calculators for many years, and I've spent many hours programming
the HP, but almost none with the TI's. Why? Well, the HP provides a language and facilities that
make programming the thing a pleasure. It's language is called "User RPL," and the RPL stands for
"Reverse Polish Lisp," but it is really more reminiscent of FORTH than Lisp.

An RPL program, in its simplest form, consists of a series of commands enclosed in guillemots, those
funny foreign quote characters that look like this '<< >>'. With a single keystroke, I get
these delimiters placed in the command-line with the cursor conveniently placed between them, ready
to enter the program. The best thing about the HP-50g's programming language is that every program
by default works with the stack exactly as you do when doing regular arithmetic. Let's say for
example, that you want to work out the hypotenuse of a right triangle given the lengths of the two
short sides using the Pythagorean Theorem. Read more ›

71 of 75 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Three words: keyboard, keyboard, keyboard! August 17, 2006

By KG

Amazon Verified Purchase

At first I was somewhat disappointed with the HP50G, since it essentially has the same form factor and functionality as the HP49G+ (which I also own). Just changing the color doesn't justify a new model designation, IMHO. Wait a tick... the keyboard seems a bit better... played with it for awhile... switched back to the HP49G+... ack! I never noticed how horrendous the keyboard was on the HP49G+. The keyboard on the HP50G is velvet in comparison. If you have been frustrated by the clunky, clicky keyboard on the HP49G+, then the HP50G is the answer. Otherwise, stick with the HP49G+, since it is essentially the same calculator.