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FE Review Manual: Rapid Preparation for the General Fundamentals of Engineering Exam F E Review Manual, 2nd ed. by Michael R. Lindeburg  86  $66.78 Reader Reviews There has long been a real need for a high-quality scientific calculator for serious scientific and engineering professional, so I was glad to see HP back in the market with the HP-33S, a replacement for their popular HP-32SII (of which I own three!). With some caveats (see below), I've found this to be a very good scientific calculator, and probably the best one being manufactured today. I guess HP finally noticed that people are willing to pay over $300 for a used HP-32SII, and took the hint. First, some general comments. I judged the overall quality of the calculator to be quite good. The keys have a good solid feel, like traditional HP calculators. It has about eighty times the memory of the HP-32SII, and I found it to run about 2.5 times faster. The manual is excellent -- clear and very well written, and similar to the HP-32SII manual. The HP-33S has a few new features that weren't on the HP-32SII: - Both RPN and algebraic entry modes. (The default is RPN.) I use RPN exclusively myself. - Several new functions: cube, cube root, integer divide, remainder, greatest integer, and signum. - A menu with forty built-in physical constants (speed of light, electron charge, etc.). This is a great feature; I was constantly having to look up physical constants and store them in registers; now the constants are built in. - A feature to shift the exponent of a number in engineering mode by factors of 1000. - Four-way cursor keys (as you would find on a PDA or graphing calculator). - Two-line display (to show both the X and Y registers). The HP-33S does have a couple of drawbacks: - Most importantly, as others have noted, the decimal point (and comma) are WAY too small. The decimal point can be difficult to see, especially when it comes after a digit 2. - The rather bizarre V-shaped keyboard is a bit strange, but not really a problem. It just tends to give the keyboard a bit of a cluttered look. I'd rather see a traditional HP rectangular layout with blue and gold function keys on a dark background. If you are a science or engineering professional or serious student, I would recommend this calculator as the best one being made today. Hopefully HP will come out with an HP-33SII that corrects the design problems -- then they'll have a five-star calculator. Comment | | (Report this) List Price: $50.99 Available from Amazon Price: $36.99 Updated on 6-5-2008.