calculator?

I’ve just enrolled for the june exam. I’m not sure which calculator to buy. The HC P 12 or the BA II Plus. Is there advantages and disadvantages to each? Which one would you recommend? Thanks Cian

Lucai – small suggestion 1. Use the search function for the next 10 days. Most of the folks on the forum are giving the exam in 10 days time if you do not get ur answer thro; search by that time, please feel free to post, and you’ll definitely get a whole lot of answers.

Hi Cian, I’ve been using the same exact BA-II Plus calculator for over 7 years and I’ve been nothing short of impressed. It’s much easier to use than an HP, you get the same amount of functions, and it costs less. TI also manufactures the BA-II Plus Professional, which can handle additional functions such as payback, discounted payback, NFV and MIRR. Albeit useful, I can handle some of these functions on my regular BA-II plus so I see no need to switch–yet. g

Cian I am sitting in June. In my opinion the BA - 11 is the best option having used them for three years. As GDiddy says, you get the same varity of functions for a cheaper purchase price. I also think the operations are more intuative. However, i will take two BA-11’s into the exam as I would not want to risk half a years study one one lump of plastic!

Cian, I have both calculators. I’m taking the exam in June and I will use the HP 12C. I like it because there’s no compute button to do PV and FV type calculations. I figured it will save me a few seconds on calculations problems during the exam.

the question boils down to do you know what RPN is and do you like it. if not, stay away from HP 12c

get the TI, even the Schweser guy recommended it. I heard the TI has more functions.

TI all the way

I love my HP12C but it’s so slow especially when calculating implied Investment Yield as it takes so much time to calculate the iterations (literally 10 seconds). I might have an older model, so you might not have to live with the same problem. I any case, I bought the BAII Pro just to save my time. PLUS another good feature about BAII is that you can actually see how you lay out cash flow whereas HP12C expects you to remember what you’d typed in. You’ll understand if you have both. Finally, like another has said, if you don’t know reverse polish and you’re not comfortable with it, then don’t get the HP12C.