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I have an HP-41C. The buttons are nearly perfect. I would love to have a modern version of it.

I bought a new HP33 for some unknown reason. It is garbage. The buttons are horrible.

The HP-41 was fascinating for an obscure reason called "synthetic programming". It was a series of key presses and operations that unlocked a mode in the calculators that allowed you to do all kinds of things that were never allowed in the first place, such as controlling individual pixels on the screen.

It was absolutely magical

http://www.hpmuseum.org/prog/synth41.htm

If you have HP-48/49 you can get an HP-41 emulator from http://www.hrastprogrammer.com/emulators.htm. You can do synthetic programming on it.

I don't need an HP-41C any longer and have resisted trying to get mine repaired for that reason. But I find the keyboard just about perfect, I bought another high-end HP model at one point (28S) and never cared for the keyboard or ergonomics generally.

I still have a couple of the 12C and related models around and they work fine for when I want a calculator with real buttons.

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