Use HP CALC "Automatic Constant" feature to figure discounts
Everyone loves a sale, but sometimes you may not be sure what the real cost is going to be until you get to the checkout counter. HP CALC's automatic constant feature is very helpful for those "store wide 35% off" sales.
Let's say you go into a store with a 35% off sale. What that means is that you will pay 65% of the original price (original price *.65 = discounted price). Use HP CALC to figure out the price of the first item (say its list price is 149.95).
Open HP CALC and press (CTR)-(A) to go to the Arithmetic function. Key in 149.95 and press (*) (*) (the asterisks or multiplication key twice). Then enter 0.65 and press (=). The result, 97.47, appears at the bottom right of the screen along with [*0.65] (see screen below).
HP Calc showing constant of 0.65 in square brackets on the bottom Calc line.
The trick here is that when you pressed (*) the second time, you told the Palmtop to use the next number as the automatic constant. The Palmtop automatically multiplies future entries by this number. All you have to do to calculate the discounted price of the next 35% off item is to key in the regular price and press (=). To clear the constant, simply press (DEL).
Tom Gibson Tom_Gibson@Thaddeus.Com