HP 10B THE TVM WONDER

I bought the HP 10B to prepare for my first University (Corporate) Finance course.

Out of the box impressions and notes on usage:

- The manual very clearly and concisely explains TVM (time value of money)
aside: some profs may call this "DCF" or discounted cash flow analysis,
it is the same concept as to what the calculator manual refers to as
TVM...

- The main reason that you will learn to love the HP 10B is its
no "compute" key which both Texas Instruments and Sharp have in
their financial/business calculators. This reduces confusion and
the amount of keys to press to get TVM answers...

- I also found the feature where one could limit the amount of
decimal places really handy, in exams etc... you don't need to know
a given answer to 7 or more decimal places, only having 4 decimals to
look at made my computations a little easier to work with and
reduced my stress in exams with fewer digits to look at. The display
is further customizable for European users (reversing commas, ex:
1,000,000 for 1 million and and decimal points) and its contrast.

- The best thing about the HP 10B, is its price! The Sharp and Texas
Instruments business calculators, in my area, Calgary Alberta Canada
are both more expensive!!! The HP 10B is a pleasant exception to the
general rule (for calculators) that more expensive is better...

After all this, you must think there must be some cons, well, I am a
finance geek and since I got an A in that intro finance course (no lie!)I am loathe to say anything bad about my plucky, invaluable HP 10B... If you put a little work into reading the manual and doing the exercises within it, you will master TVM...

The cons that I am willing to make about the HP 10B are:

- Power consumption, it uses 3 expensive "watch type" batteries and they
seem to get used up fairly quickly (within a year), so replace them
regularly if you foresee regular use (I actually own 2 to prevent any
power outage problems).

- Never used it for stats, and the documentation is thinner regarding
the "other half" of its capabilities.

In conclusion, if you want to be able to do TVM, this is the calculator for you but I won't give it 5 out of 5 due to its inefficient power use and no option for solar...