The poors
Never could afford or justify the $$$ for one of the HP-48's, but did get an HP-20S for a reasonable price and used it to get through a year and a half of Calculus and a year of Physics. None of that fancy graphical stuff or high-end RPN gee-whizzery, but it did have just enough crude macro capability to be useful. I still use it every now and then. I eventually picked up a TI-81 and spent a week ooh-ing and ahh-ing that it could draw functions. The TI didn't survive a fall a few years later.
I also remember about 7 or 8 years ago being gob-smacked that I could get a pretty decently functional (but non-graphing) scientific calculator at a dollar-only store for a buck. Whoda thunk it...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
