Main Page | Shopping Cart | Purchase Information

HP 50g Graphing Calculator US$450

Note: I am down to my final inventory on these. Once they are gone, they are gone. This is the end of a previously unbroken era of RPL machines going back to January 1987, and of Saturn machines (virtual, in this case) going back to February 1984.

The HP 50g is Hewlett-Packard's top-of-the-line calculator. It directly replaces the 49g+, and it is the successor to the 49G, 48GX, and 28S, among others.

The operating environment of the 50g should be familiar to anyone who has used the 48GX, but everything performs much better, as it uses the Meta Kernel system introduced in the 49G and runs on a high-speed, modern processor.

While HP targets this calculator at students and professionals alike, it is more powerful than most students will need. In contrast to calculators such as the TI-89, which attempts to provide a "black box" solution to high school and lower-level college math, giving answers that attempt to match standard textbook expectations without giving the student much insight into the process, the HP 50g gives the user much more control over the calculations, enabling hard problems to be made easier. In this respect, the HP 50g is much better suited for advanced students and professionals.

The 50g is hands-down, the absolute best calculator for engineers, surveyors, and hackers. Users with serious real-world math needs will appreciate the RPL calculating environment, with unlimited depth stack, the extraordinary unit conversion tools, and much more. Surveyors can take advantage of the connectivity and expandability and can take it out in the field with them with third-party products, such as the Precision DC50. And users with a desire to tinker will love the five built-in programming languages and the ability to dive deep into the heart of the operating system. At the same time, it is an excellent choice for users with a deep interest in mathematics, providing an extremely capable computer algebra system in the palm of the hand.

Although the calculator defaults to a mode that should be familiar to users of the TI-89, it can easily be made to act more like traditional HP calculators by enabling RPN (press [MODE] [+/-] [ENTER] to permanently change to RPN) and switching from choose boxes to softkey menus (set flag -117).

Included Accessories

• High quality soft case with magnetic clasp
• USB cable
• Batteries
• Printed quick start guide (full user's manual no longer included)
• CD with Windows-based connectivity software and PDF of 887-page user's guide

Optional Accessories

Software Preload

Español

Français

Italiano

Physical Characteristics

• 184 mm by 87 mm by 23.5 mm (7.2" by 3.4" by 0.93")
• 250 g (8.8 oz) with batteries
• Black painted faceplate with textured black back
• Hard plastic keys with metal domes for fast and accurate typing
• 7.5 cm (3") high-contrast display with anti-glare protective cover

Technical Specifications

• 131x80 pixel display with adjustable contrast, showing 9 lines with 22 characters with the default font or 12 lines with 33 characters with the mini font, plus a menu line
• 75 MHz 32-bit ARM920T processor
• 512 KB RAM (240 KB available to the user)
• 2 MB Flash ROM (768 KB available to the user)
• Four AAA batteries, providing 50 hours of typical use, and one CR2032 battery
• Piezoelectric beeper
• Powered by battery or USB
• Over 800 built-in commands, performing thousands of functions
• HP part number F2229AA (Data Sheet)

Calculating Environments

• RPL-style RPN (Reverse Polish Notation)
• EOS-style algebraic
• Equation Writer (textbook-style input)
• Stack display shows 7 lines by default, but it can be increased to 8 or 9 by shrinking or removing the header
• Header shows current directory path and important settings, and optionally can display a digital or analog clock

Expandability

• SD card slot, with support for industry-standard cards up to 2 GB formatted as FAT16 (full support) or FAT32 (partial support)
  (Note: cards larger than 1 GB will have their free space misrepresented by Filer due to insufficient room for the number of digits, but will otherwise work fine)

Communications

• Infrared (IrDA and HP 82240B thermal printer supported)
• USB (cable included)
• RS-232 serial (cable available separately)

Programmability

• Five built-in programming languages: User RPL, HP Basic, System RPL, Saturn assembly, ARM assembly
• Compilation and decompilation of code built-in, along with limited debugging support
• Programmable in C using a PC and third-party software (HPGCC)
• Built-in tools for hacking the internal operating system and creating system libraries
• Full access to all built-in commands, including all stack operations, branching, testing, graphics, time, input and output

Customizability

• Fully-redefinable keyboard
• Four different font sizes
• Font editing
• Three built-in languages for messages (English, French, Spanish)

Applications

• Text editor with copy/cut/paste and find/replace functionality, plus multiple fonts and styles
• Matrix editor displaying seven rows and four columns by default
• Equation writer with easy-to-use interface for entering expressions as they would be written on paper (similar to MathCAD)
• Clock with alarms
• Finance (time value of money and amortization)

Graphing

• 2-D Function, Polar, Parametric, Differential Equation, Conic, Truth, Histogram, Bar, Scatter, Slopefield, and multiple 3-D modes
• Determine roots, intersections, slope, area, extrema
• Zoom, trace, find coordinates, and shade plots
• Plot multiple equations simultaneously
• Table of values

Probability and Statistics

• Σx, Σx2, Σy, Σy2, Σxy
• Sample standard deviation, population standard deviation, mean, weighted mean
• Curve fitting (linear, logarithmic, exponential, and power regression)
• Plot statistical data
• Hypothesis tests
• Confidence intervals
• Combinations, permutations, factorials, random number generation
• Upper-tail normal distribution, upper-tail chi-square distribution, upper-tail Snedecor's F-distribution, and upper-tail student's t distribution

Scientific

• Date and time arithmetic
• Decimal hours/degrees to hours/degrees-minutes-seconds conversions
• Rectangular and polar (cylindrical/spherical) conversions
• Angle conversions
• Powerful unit conversions including arithmetic and simplification
• Base conversions including arithmetic and bitwise operations and adjustable word size (decimal, binary, hexadecimal, octal)
• Constants library, with 39 common physical constants

Mathematics

• Advanced Computer Algebra System (CAS)
• Calculus, including numeric and symbolic integration (Risch algorithm) and differentiation, integration by parts, Fourier expansion, Laplace transform
• Differential equations, including solving
• Limits and series, including Taylor expansion, Taylor polynomials, and asymptotic development
• Matrices, including transposition, diagonalization, Hadamard product, Gaussian symbolic quadratic form, reduced-row echelon form, determinant, inverse, eigenvalues, eigenvectors, basis, image, kernel, characteristic polynomial, minimal polynomial, Cholesky factorization, holomorphic operators, the Hessian matrix, Hilbert matrices, and Vandermonde matrices
• Vectors, including absolute value, dot product, cross product, curl, vector potential
• Polynomial operations, including simplification and expansion of expressions, Sturm's sequences, the Horner scheme, Lagrange interpolation, the polygamma function, cyclotomic, Hermite, Legendre, and Tchebycheff polynomials, GCD, LCM, Grœbner basis, and the determinant of Sylvester matrices of polynomials
• Infinite (within memory) precision integer math, including prime number calculation, Chinese remainders, Gaussian integers, Bernoulli numbers, Euler's Φ function
• Trigonometry, including hyperbolic and inverse sine, cosine and tangent, as well as simplification of trigonometric expressions
• Rewrite expressions, including reordering of variables and conversions between trigonometric functions, and rewriting of logarithmic and exponential terms
• Modulo arithmetic
• Solving, including the traditional HP Solve, as well as a symbolic solver, numeric solver, differential equation solver, and simultaneous linear equations solver
• Fractions, including powerful conversions from decimals to fractions in terms of π and radicals, or between proper and improper fractions
• Decimal functions, finding the integer and fractional parts, the floor and ceiling, the mantissa and exponent, the sign, and rounding or truncating to a specified number of decimal places or significant figures
• List processing, performing operations on multiple numbers at once, as well as calculating the sum, product, and differences, and sorting
• Discrete Fourier transform and its inverse
• Complex numbers, both with decimals and infinite precision integers
• Summation

Software Library

• Pre-loaded with the HP Equation Library, and the HP Periodic Table of Elements is available as a separate download
• Thousands of third party programs available for download
• Compatible at the binary level with all software written for the 48gII/49g+ and virtually all software written for the 49G
• Compatible at the source-code level with most software written for the 48GX/G+/G/SX/S and 28C/S

Standardized Exam Support

• AP Calculus
• AP Statistics
• AP Chemistry
• AP Physics
• SAT Reasoning Test
• SAT Subject Tests in Mathematics Level 1 and Level 2
• PSAT/NMSQT

HP Provided Documentation

• Quick start guide, provided in printed form with the calculator
• User's Manual, 184 pages, provided as a separate download
• User's Guide, 887 pages, provided in electronic form with the calculator
• Advanced User's Reference Manual, 653 pages, provided as a separate download (same as 49g+ and 48gII manual)
• Fifty-six Training Modules, totaling 284 pages, including 9 for business and finance, 9 for real estate, and 38 for students, scientists, and engineers, provided as a separate download

Warranty and Support

• 1 year limited warranty in the US, provided by HP America
• Toll-free technical support in the US, at 800-HP-INVENT (800-474-6836)

More Photos

Note: The packaging is now a cardboard blister pack rather than the plastic clamshell depicted here. Also, the case is heavy fabric rather than synthetic leather.