Personally, I am somewhat surprised that people like the HP-42. I don't find it to be a good compromise at all. The calculators that I like using are ones that

Personally, I am somewhat surprised that people like the HP-42. I don't find it to be a good compromise at all. The calculators that I like using are ones that are either relatively simple and small and don't try to do too much (like HP-25, HP-11C, HP-12C), or ones that are complex, but do unique things that are very useful (like unit conversions in the HP-50G). The 42 is neither. As to sitting at a computer, I guess it depends on what your calculations are and how quickly you can reach for a calculator (mine sits smack dab in the middle of my desk, between the split halves of my keyboard). But a spreadsheet won't let me quickly multiply values that are in microns and get an answer in engineering notation. I am also not advocating for "graphing calculators" — plotting functions on a calculator makes no sense these days, nor do matrix computations. The sweet spot has moved in the direction of simpler calculators, because you are not likely to do anything complex (like graphing) on a calculator today.