Keys on handhelds

[Busty]

Just out of curiosity, how important is the feel of keys on handheld devices to other here?
I really like older HP calculators because the are very tactile and you can be sure that your input gets registered. My daily beater is a US manufactured HP-12c.
The keypad on the Blackberry Curve I had for a while on the other hand was one of this rubber thingies that starts out mushy and gets worse from there. I better not talk about the iPhone that replaced it. Beautiful design, but without the automatic spellchecker not usable

[huha]

I don't mind the key feel on my phone, because I rearely use it anyway. Mine are somewhat hard to press, but at the very least there's tactile feedback, so I don't mind. I absolutely loathe automatic spellcheckers or word autocompletion, however. I recently tried to write a short message (which I do incredibly rarely) on my phone and got so angry because T9 startet replacing almost every word more complicated than Apple with arbitrary words, even when just adding punctuation to one I painstakingly  entered manually.

Calculators are entirely different. I absolutely love HP's keys, but sadly there's no decently priced calculator which features them. The new HP35s is too feature rich and/or expensive (and lacks critical features that would make its feature set worthwile to use, i.e. a computer interface; its keys are not bad, but I certainly don't want to constantly enter programs with them and decide what to keep because you can't back them up), the 10C is too expensive and has too few features and the HP41 is simply too expensive (although it's really awesome with magstripe readers and all).
At the moment, I'm using a TI 30X-IIs. The keys are almost totally horrible; they offer close to no tactile feel, but at least the debouncer does its job quite well, so entering calculations without constantly looking at the LCD is possible.
On the other hand, my other calculator is a Casio fx-991ES. It's not expensive and incredibly feature rich with a semi-graphical display that can't plot functions, but display fractions and square roots "like in a textbook." Oh, and it sucks so hard. I don't know what they did wrong, but it constantly loses key presses, especially when viewing/modifying large equations. It's horribly slow and the debouncer is utter crap as it seems to debounce more than neccessary, losing keys in progress. You can definitely not enter equations without looking or you'll end up with a surrealistic juxtaposition of semi-random numbers and functions. The keys feel bad. Still, I use it as my main calculator because the guts are nice, the display is nice and it's reasonably fast. But actually using the thing is a pain that wants me to have a HP41.

-huha

[Busty]

I am a little too young (and greedy) for a HP41 but today I consider selling my HP48GX after university a stupidity. That was just the top of calculators, and then the whole product category went the way of the Dodo bird after that. The latest new HP (20B) looks great but that's about it. A bit like keyboards ... looks over functionality.
ps. I am German, too.

[bhtooefr]

And the thing is, a lot of the old HPs go for a lot on the used market - I decided to look for a 48GX, and found that I couldn't even get a 48S for much less than a new 50g. (Which does have a decent, albeit a bit stiff, keyboard.)

My Palm Centro annoys me because the keys are stiff and are too small, although they are well spaced and have accurate tactility.

[Busty]

Yes prices are high. On ebay germany is a 41CY that stands at 1700EUR

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290307833187

[lowpoly]

I have a 48G at home and a 48GX (with MetaKernel and RAM extension) in the office. Both bought new.  Another case of equipment fetishism.

Today, if I need a calculator I use an emulator on my pda.

[bhtooefr]

I really need to register NeoCal.

(If I need a calculator, I usually use Google, unless I can find the 50g without too much looking.)

[cchan]

Kyocera K325 mobile is okay. Quiet click. Sometimes fails to register strokes, but I've dropped it way too many times.

TI-89 however... horrible, No tactile feedback.

[keyb_gr]

In terms of PDAs, I never progressed beyond a Palm IIIxe, which doesn't have any dedicated keyboard. (And even that eventually gathered dust.)

Calculator wise, I have the same ones as huha (TI-30X IIs and fs-991ES) - which is hardly surprising given that they're common non-programmable scientific calculators (programmable ones frequently were not permitted in exams). Back in the day I got the TI because competing Casio models had incredibly tiny 2nd-level lettering. The fx-991ES with its dark lettering on silver then did better, and it has some complex number functions as well (though ironically I never got to use these in the exam in which they may have been useful).

They both have their pros and cons. Neither has both pi and 10^x on the first level, and the keys are hardly exciting - my parents' old Sharp calculator (which I eventually gave back when some segments started failing) still does best in terms of keypad, but of course is a bit bare-bones by today's standards. I tend to use the TI at home and the Casio at university, but it would really be more efficient to just get used to a single type.

[huha]

The Casio's complex number functions are utterly useless. You can't do anything like xⁱ, which makes complex numbers a real joke, because that'll most likely the only way you will handle complex numbers.

If only HP made a decent calculator with nice buttons, I'd buy it. But the HP35s has its fair share of quite stupid problems (extended precision, but important constants like PI are saved with normal precision, making it constantly spit out results with tiny remainders thanks to mission precision, which in my opinion is entirely irritating and contradicts HAVING extended precision in the first place). Also, paying a fair amount of money for having a programmable calculator (and not a bad one indeed) without the ability to actually down- or upload the programs is a deal breaker.
I had a Casio CFX9850GB Plus in school (luckily it was purchased by them and lent to the students, as it was quite bad); the buttons were so-so and it was what they laughingly called "programmable." Programming sucked, it was incredibly slow and cumbersome (like the rest of this device. Really, it was that bad.), but at least you could transfer the programs to or from a PC.

-huha

[bhtooefr]

Well, they do still make the 12C, although it's also programmable, not scientific, and more expensive. (Then again, it was also originally released before anyone ever thought of hooking a pocket calculator to a PC.)