----- Original Message -----
From: "James Knott"
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Sunday 17 July 2005 16:02, John R. Sowden wrote:
I am running Suse 9.3 with the KDE that came with it. I am looking for a calculator that, hopefully does not require megabytes o libraries, etc that gives me a virtual tape, base conversions, memory function, a few more features that a 4-banger. Couldn't google one.
I have no idea what a virtual tape is, but kcalc gives you all the other functions you mention.
Also, the PG calculator is very cool, gives you the look of a pocket scientific calculator
That PG calculator uses "Reverse Polish Notation", which while very efficient, is not known by most users. Many years ago, I had a Novus Mathematician calculator, which used RPN. Once I got used to it, I found it was better than algebraic notation. I believe the HP scientific calculators also used RPN.
You guys are all wet. *grin* Never send a computer to do a calculator's job. $50 on e-bay. The HP-28S is the finest (albeit older) calculator ever made -- keep one handy at all times. Capabilities? I've designed gravity gradient decent profiles for lunar landings on the thing with less than 10,000 iterations. Libration points, Eigen vectors,values, partial differential equations, symbolic integration/differentiation, Fourier series, Laplace transforms -- no problem. Want to play with numbers in the imaginary plane? -- This baby is for you. Can't go wrong..... Yes it's RPN and it's programming language puts C, Java, etc. to shame. All done in less than 32K of memory. Amazing! (more memory than the Apollo program flew on) Sorry for the OT post -- I couldn't resist...... Aging eng./atty./geek/ you get the picture.... -- David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E. RANKIN LAW FIRM, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 (936) 715-9333 (936) 715-9339 fax www.rankinlawfirm.com --