HP Power 48 Calculator Emulator

It is said in the article that it's free.
also, it's not the only choice and may not even be the best choice for serious calculation. PowerOne calculator supports color graphing for instance.

I don't think you have any idea of what HP 48 series calculator is. It is specifically designed for engineers / engineering students, and it's so powerful that most people will unlikely know how to use it. My brother used to own a real one that costs him $100+, and I sometimes use it to do vector calculations.

For PowerOne Calculator, this is more tended to be a TI-83 calculator that you can plot graph and analyze it.

So, in simple words, these are completely two different calculators with two narrow audiences.

"I doubt, therefore I might be."

you are not the only ones who know how powerful HP48 is. The key is whether you need those functions, how easy to use the calculator. As you said, not everbody knows how to use HP48, so I guess you are saying HP48 is not as good as PowerOne in some ways. Also, PowerOne Graph is designed for palm. HP48 is not. So in terms of how convinence it is to use the graphic calculator, I think PowerOne win over HP48 a lot.
I am not saying that HP48 is not good in my first post. But you just don't need a 1GHz CPU with 512mb ram on your pda. Get what I mean? HP48 is not a good choice for most people.
Sorry, I don't mean to have a confrontation here.

I was an engineering student 13 years ago and even though I now only focus on software development I still use my 12 year old HPSX as my standard calculator. After spending countless days and nights with that thing, I can use it with my eyes closed. About a year ago I searched the web for a palm based emulation of my trusty HP without much luck. Now my HP48SX will follow me wherever my PDA goes. Great job!

Well, that's not their problem. It's progress... just like you can't do HDTV on an old set, you can't run programs like this on an old palm. Can you imagine trying to cram all the buttons that are shown in the screenshot, along with the names of what they did on a 160x160 grayscale device? It's not feasible... the Clie NX70 has 6 times the screen space, as well as 65k colors.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have a calculator like this on an old palm, but if it would cripple it to fit it on a III-series palm, what's the point, really?

The whole reason to upgrade to high-res is for programs that actually use the extra space to display more info, not to just look at sharper text.... this is why people get high-res screens.

Plus, it's free. It's not like the guy is targeting the mass market for product exposure, he's making a product for anyone who wants it.

Not to shoot you down, here, this sounds negative. There's tons of other great calculator programs, http://www.freewarepalm.com/calculator/calculator.shtml
has tons of great free ones... check it out.

-Davy Fields
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Palm_OS_5/

The heavy device requirements have always been the biggest complaint regarding Power48, and while I can understand the frustration for older Palm device users, I make no apologies for the requirements. The nature of emulation makes high-powered hardware an absolute necessity. In all honesty, the 33MHz minimum CPU requirement is stretching the limits of useability already - anything less and you'd be able to do the calculations in your head faster.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Power48 was not created by a company with lots of resources to put behind it. It was created by one person - me - in my spare time. I simply don't have time to go back and try to support the myriad combinations of PalmOS devices.

My goal with Power48, and for all of my future programs, is to create software that utilizes the capabilities of the latest and greatest hardware; software that is not limited by constraints of backward compatibility. The new OS5 PDAs have vast barely tapped potential that I want to explore fully, and unfortunately this means I have to draw the line of compatiblity far closer to the bleeding edge than the decaying edge.

As for the narrow user demographic, I think you might be surprised to find that it's not so narrow anymore. The vast majority of people interested in Power48 have a device that's compatible with it. There are a few who don't and have written to tell me as much, and to those users I am sorry for the inconvenience, but this is the price of progress.

Regards,
-Robert Hildinger, developer Power48

I can understand the problem with such a huge calculator. If you check out the link below for a great calculator for about $19.95 and a full license for only a fraction of the size, then I believe you will be pleasantly be surprised. I would like such a calculator if I were still in school... alas, I have graduated, so this little one works fine for me.

http://www.palmgear.com/software/showsoftware.cfm?sid=281671E5-7591-4B23-8218A398121CC31E&prodID=3515

Hey, it's my Bible and personal journal in one neat little package... now that's pretty cool.

I'll give it a try

Training sales and real estate professionals on effective palm use!

I bought the 48sx like 12 years ago for $240. I consider it one of the best purchases I have ever made. It got me thru. so many engineering/math/science classes. One of my favorite features is doing matrix calculations, it does 6x6 simultaneous equations in no time!
Kinda funny, we "nerds" made fun of other engineering students that didn't have one and gave them peer pressure to buy one :).
Btw, once you get used to an HP, going back and using a normal calculator seems so idiotic.

Did you know you can even program it to play sounds (like 440hz) or do animations, play tetris, etc, etc. :D

This 48GX integration in the Palm PDA is ingenious! I travel alot with my subnotebook computer and HP48GX that I use as my pda. There are basic software programs similar to Palm for HP that allows me to store phone numbers, accounts, to do list, games, and other basic functions of Palm OS that it was not necessary for me to change to PDA yet. But now, I can look forward to replacing my handy HP that I had for over 10yrs with this emulator. What I'd like about the HP 48GX that I'm used to is that it has RPN and the stacking of numbers on the display, and I know where all the buttoms and functions are. This ease of use of 48GX made it difficult to let it go and always in my pack whereever I travel. But now, I'm replacing with the New Garmin IQUE. Thanks Robert for this insightful program.

>>>I must concur with the approval of this application. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I installed it on my TT. I have had my HP48G sitting beside my various Palm devices for 5 years now. AT LAST I am now happy to toss the HP aside. I can’t wait to show it to my PPC buddies – I know at least one engineer who will be envious (I trust there isn’t an equivalent PPC app). Congratulations to the Power48 team. Best app I have downloaded for a long time.<<<<

ehrrr.......
HP48G emulator for PPC came out about two years ago including the HP49G when most Palm user was still amrveling over m500. And please look at the alternate screen configuration, there are 4 alternate for HP49G. You don't have to squint on 0.8 inch virtual display. Try landscape instead.
http://web.jet.es/leobueno/

The race now is to port TI-89. It's about 2-3 months away from first alpha.

other advance computational tool
http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/wince/maxx.html
http://www.saltire.com/xpander.html
http://www.symbolictools.de/public/pocketconsole/
applications/scm/index.htm

Actually, I did some startup / shutdown time measurements on a friend's T|T, and got the following:

48SX: 1 sec startup / 2 sec shutdown
48GX: 1.5 sec startup / 2.5 sec shutdown
49G: 4.5 sec startup / 5 sec shutdown

Perhaps the SD card you are using is particularly slow.

-Robert Hildinger, developer Power48

Love the idea of the 49G emulator. Am a physics student, so use the functionality of a TI-89 every day, including symbolic integration. (although it doesn't handle the form x*exp(x) and Gaussians).

Used to use a 15C, so RPN is no problem.

Have a Clie SJ33, so have room for a memory stick, but don't own any.

Would love to see a version that loads into on-board memory.

Any chance of that?

Awesome program!

Joe Prizzi

spaceman,

I had to do a hard reset too. I've since removed the emulator. I'm not sure that I've succesfully removed the ROM image. If I could get Avantgo to run well off the SD card I would have 3MB free. This is another example of the limitations imposed by the skimpy 14 MB useable RAM that Palm gives us.

David

Hi,

Could anybody direct me to any other links hosting this power48 download? I'm receiving server messages stating bandwidth limits are prohibiting site access for the download.

BTW, IMHO, Hewlett-Packard calculators are truly the best. I'm not an engineer, but had been using my HP-41CX since I was 12 years old and my HP-48SX since I was 20 years of age. (I'm 31 now.) I was even able to obtain an old, working HP67 with the LED (vs. LCD) display and built-in magnetic data card reader!

These calculators are useful for just about anybody who currently benefits from the use of *any* programmable calculator.

Now, if only I can download the power48 application!

Do you have the version for the Tungsten T OS 5? The version I just downloaded is only compatible with the Sony.