boden11's Full Review: Hewlett Packard 12c Scientific Calculator
About 2 years ago my Uncle bought me a Hewlett Packard 12C calculator. It stayed in the box for nearly its entire life, and a sale on eBay was looking imminent. However, last quarter I took a Financial Management class (I am a Business major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) and finally this calculator got some use. The teacher recommended that we all purchase a HP 10B calculator (better than the 12C), however since I didn't want to pay 35-40$ for yet another calculator (I also have a TI-85) I decided to wing it with my HP12C. It worked too, as I ended up with an A- in the class...however it did take a lot more work than if I would have just broken down and got the HP10B.
Let me first give some information on the financial features of this calculator. The HP12C does more than just a normal calculator, it sports a full array of financial abilities including: Interest on annuities, Bond maturities, Bond Yield-To-Dates (YTD), Loan Amortization schedules, Future Values, Present Values, Payments, IRR (Internal Rate of Return) and NPV (Net Present Value) --> both of these are very important financial functions. These values can be figured out using a normal calculator, however with the formulas built into the HP 12C it saves a LOT of time and reduces the possibility for error.
Problems with the 12C
Well one of the problems with the 12C is when you want to setup interest on a loan/savings that is compounded differently than just monthly. To change it to quarterly compounding is a MAJOR CHORE which I never got to work fully. With the 10B this can be changed very easily with a few button pushes. The 12C defaults to 12 compounds/year and has to be changed with each problem (unlike the 10B).
Also, when figuring out the IRR (internal rate of return), I sometimes had to divide the end result by Ka (cost of Kapital) to get the true IRR, something the HP10B didn't need to do. It didn't really make sense either, since Ka should just be inputted into i (interest % rate) but that didn't work right.
The 12C is also much slower than the 10B and for large problems (cash flow over many years with different returns) I have had to wait up to 30-45 seconds while the 12C computed the answer. The 10B is at least twice as fast in computations.
Conclusion
Because of the nearly identical prices of the 12C and 10B it is really hard to recommend this calculator when something so much better is out there for a few bucks more. The 12C is a good calculator however, and can do everything that the 10B can. The manual for the 12C is also very detailed (about 150-200 pages) and shows how to use every feature of the 12C and manipulate it for complex problems. However for tests, not every professor will allow students to bring in their manual, and memorizing hundreds of ways to enter data in a calculator isn't easy.
My advice is that if you already have a 12C BUT don't plan on taking any hardcore finance classes, keep it. The 10B is better, but you don't really need to spend the extra green. However, if you are a business major (especially with a Finance concentration) you will be much better off getting the 10B.
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