HP-30B Business Professional Calculator

In financial services I used an HP19 (not II) along with its printer for year's. What sold me on the HP30b was the Black-Scholes calculations for option pricesFirst off the construction, fit and finish of my sample is top notch. The display is sharp and clear under all lighting conditions and you can even adjust the contrast. The keyboard is tactile and responsive and I haven't seen any dropped or doubled entries. To those who are wailing away in multi step calculations without looking at the screen to validate their data and are getting mistakes, maybe you need paper tape. If you are consistently dropping keys your calculator is defective, get it replaced.HP did include a very comprehensive 34 page quick start guide which walked me through the "BASIC" functions of the calculator. Since documentation is no longer measured in pages but pounds companies have stopped killing trees, and right on PAGE ONE they direct you to [...] and highly recommend you refer to their users guide. Not only did I find the Users guide to be complete, but there is also a programmers guide along with Web based examples that will hand hold you through some very complex operations. There are also toll free numbers listed where a customer care operator would be more then happy to help you through any issues and answer any questions.This is the first financial calculator that has enough science functionality built in to go between accounting, statics, and engineering classes with out reaching for another calculator. More than enough horsepower with quick results.There are complaints that a most favorite function or calculation is buried behind layers of menus, shift buttons or bothersome keystrokes. There are only so many keys on the keyboard and HP has done an admirable job of keeping the most used features front and center. If I ruled the world I might have done some different, but there is good news. I did find that you can write short programs which will pull out buried functions like the built-in probability distributions, and assigned them to keys. Oh happy day, best of both worlds.And speaking of programming HP provided on a separate adhesive template a keyboard overlay of programming functions. These are additional function labels with just enough information to jog your memory. It's not required and can be left off if you don't want it cluttering up the keyboard.My HP 30b runs on 2032 coin cells or that is what they tell me. No sign of it needing replacement yet and I am so glad this is not something else that needs to be thrown on the battery charger daily. HP also included a handy slip case to keep the 30b clean and shiny.I would buy it again, but only if this one gets borrowed or stolen.

I had my HP12C Platinum for about a year when its "Enter" key stopped working. Otherwise, it was a great calculator and I fell in love with RPN.So instead of purchasing an another possibly defective 12C, which costs twice as much as its competitors, I have decided to buy the HP30B, which like all HP calculators, does RPN.First, this calculator is somewhat on the large side. It is fairly thick as well. The buttons and the build quality seem to be better than the HP12C Platinum. The keystrokes have a very nice feel to them and the display is large and informative.As far as the speed of the calculations, this calculator is fast with no noticeable lag.The only part of this calculator that disappointed was its keyboard layout.I found myself entering way too many keys to make simple calculations. For example to get anything higher than a square (^2) exponent, you have to punch in the base number, input, exponent number, blue key, and the exponent key. With HP12C, it is base number, enter, exponent number, exponent key. Pressing that extra key in pressurized test situations is pretty annoying, especially if you need to do multiple of equations.The number of extra keystrokes is even worse when you have to factor by anything other than a square root. That involves base number, input, factor number, blue key, 1/x key, blue key, and exponent key. Wow and that can be really, really annoying.The keyboard is not laid out in an efficient manner, and that's too bad because if the keyboard layout was anything like the HP12C, I would think this might be the best financial calculator I have used (I have also used TI BA II Professional).

THE AWESOME: Unbounded PotentialThis *business* calculator can be re-purposed into the most-powerful *scientific* calculator in the history of scientific calculators (excepting graphing calculators, which are more powerful in some respects but also are heftier and tend to emphasize graphing and algebra functions over pure number crunching).The re-purposing is done by re-flashing (re-programming) the device. Web links cannot be included in Amazon reviews. However, the re-purposed calculator goes by the name of WP-34s (after the initials of the authors of the replacement software: Walter B & Paul Dale). Sourceforge hosts the project WP-34s, so check the info out there.The WP-34s improves upon the HP-41C/HP-42S and the newer HP-33s/HP-35s. It's rather ironic that a *financial* calculator sold by HP can be reprogrammed into a far more powerful *scientific* calculator than HP's own HP-35s, using software written entirely by enthusiasts not affiliated with HP.THE BAD: Criminal Non-Support and Mixed QualityI just had a very strange (and unpleasant) experience with HP "product support".I bought my first (brand new in sealed package) HP-30b in May 2011. The keyboard's quality was pretty poor, with quite a few keys that did not click at all... they felt very "flat" (all keys are supposed to click, by the way). Other than the keyboard issue, the calculator was perfectly functional during the few weeks I used it.Moreover, after a few months without being touched, the HP-30b died a spontaneous death. (This calculator was never repurposed as I indicated above, precisely because I did not like the feel of the keyboard. Last month 3/2012 I bought a second 30b whose keyboard is much better---product quality is a mixed bag!)I assumed the dead calculator was under warranty, so I called HP support. (It is April 2012 as of this writing, hence less than 1 year after my original purchase.)I was told that since the seller was not an "HP Authorized Reseller" (it was a Third Party seller in Amazon), and since the calculator had been manufactured in 2010, it was long out of warranty!!! I got some preaching on the demerits of "buying from non-authorized HP resellers" and I had to try really hard to avoid yelling expletives on the phone. I told the representative that I was obviously an idiot for not buying directly from HP at full retail price, meaning twice what I paid, and then I hung up.I want to emphasize that I received the calculator new-in-the-box with HP's "Security Seal" intact back in May 2011. Nobody can "fake" these calculators nor their HP-seal bearing boxes. The product I bought was legit. The only illegitimate thing going on is HP selling old-stock calculators through non-authorized resellers fully knowing they will not have to make good on their warranty in case of failure, as it happened to me. I own several of HP's current calculator models, including 12c, 33s and 35s. I have had good luck with their quality, so perhaps the defective 30b is a fluke, but that is no excuse for reneging on the warranty. Criminal HP!I had no idea that new-in-the-box electronics (with a dated receipt) could be sold without warranty, at least not without some *very clear* warning to that effect.I will try to seek a remedy from Amazon, and shall update this review accordingly.UPDATE: Amazon issued a full refund (as store credit) for the defunct calculator. I also got "free education" on so-called "grey market" purchases. One cannot take things for granted as a consumer, even if shopping at reputable (?) merchants (Amazon). In this regard, I am quite disappointed with the experience.