Ah, with every new calculator comes new bugs! I just got my HP Prime in the mail, and I've been playing with it. I've found some issues, so I'm posting a big list here. Just like this thread, I think it's a good idea to compile a nice big list to send. Of course, these 'bugs' might just be because I don't understand how things are supposed to work, but we'll remove those from the list when I figure it out. Please help by submitting bugs of your own! So, here goes:

Severe
• The HP data-link program crashes sometimes when you double-click on an application.
• Modifying certain variables in the data-link program while the calculator is using them can cause the calculator to crash.
• The Edit Integer dialog box, when in Edit mode, does not behave as expected. Works fine in the emulator.
• It’s not possible to input negative slope parameters in the Test function of the Explorer apps, even if the function expects you to input one to solve it.
• Entering in the Home or CAS screens a ? followed by any data causes the calculator to crash.
Moderate
• The table() function does not seem to function despite being in the catalog.
• In Geometry, labels from Numeric View seen in Plot View with a dark background enabled becomes unreadable.
• The Edit Integer dialog box experiences severe graphical issues when dragged.
• In some cases, the Info pane of applications in the data-link program displays garbage end characters if the calculator edited it before the application.
• The Help files for the MOUSE() function specify a mode type of #5 for detecting long-clicks, but a long-click never triggers with the function.
• The PIXON and PIXOFF commands, without optional arguments, both set the screen to white.
Trivial
• There’s no Help text for the following:
o left()
o right()
• There’s a Help article for the DataStreamer app, but it doesn’t appear when pressing the Help button in the app itself.
• The Settings for the Spreadsheet are accessed from the Symbolic View, but the only actually usable view is the Numeric view.
• There's a lot of mention of DOM_STRING, DOM_FLOAT, and the like in the Help files...

I am curious about how many of the HP 39gII bugs and the HP Prime beta calc bugs were fixed before the release? I know the OS is based on the extremely buggy 39gII (which had a new OS done from scratch, unlike the 49g/50g series).

The most annoying thing though is that implicit multiplications don't seem to work in most case (much like in Axe Parser).

EDIT: By the way, I suggest e-mailing Tim Wessman if you ever send lists of bugs, not HP directly. Since he is involved in developing the HP Prime, our bug reports will be seen easier.

I'd like to know as well; sadly; I've only had experience with the RPL calculators up until now. Although with the multiplication issue, it seems that it's mostly working. It actually might try to be a bit too smart now; it implicitly expands DE to D*E if both D and E exist and DE doesn't, for example. This doesn't happen in CAS mode, which makes the rule a bit inconsistant.

In standard textbook entry mode when entering e^x it enters and is displayed in textbook format.
In CAS mode it seems to show up in algebreic mode as exp().

Also the quick start says that when you press[Vars] I should see a soft key one the touch screen that says "user" if I have any stored variables. I cannot seem to find this.

It would also be nice if it did some implied multiplication in CAS mode. For example 2sin(x), instead I have to enter 2*sin(x). It seems to work fine in the non CAS mode.

In "Home" mode, I can add 1∠45 and 1∠135 and get the proper result. It remains correct when I convert it from polar to rectangular form:



In "CAS" mode, I try and do the same basic math, and I don't even know how it comes up with this result. (This is obviously incorrect!) Observe:



It gets even weirder when I scroll up and hit enter on the result to put it into my entry bar. Huh?



Two errors in CAS mode that aren't even consistent with each other!

Hopefully, this (and other bugs) can be easily fixed in an update. I also hope that they can make the Home and CAS modes a little more consistent with each other.

-Clayton

I just performed this on my TI-85 and the answer I get in Radian mode is the CAS answer while Degree mode gives me the non-CAS answer. Check your angle mode. Otherwise the OS may be getting confused as to which angle mode is active.

If you look in the top right corner in all screenshots I posted, the menu bar in both modes shows that I'm in degree mode. (If it were in radian, it would have a Pi instead of a degree symbol.)

However, you are right. It appears that in CAS mode, it assumes the polar coordinates are in radians even when in degree mode. I believe I would still consider this a bug.

Thanks,
Clayton

FWIW: great circle distance is measured in nautical miles; one NM = 6076 feet. The Apple Newton incorrectly used for its GCD calculation one mile = 5280 feet.

No one is perfect, not even Apple, or Hewlett-Packard

The problem now is that for a ROM update to occur, we have to wait at least until December for the connectivity kit to arrive, assuming that HP can generate a ROM fix.

What do you mean? The connectivity kit ships with the calculator. I actually got a ROM update last night when I connected the calculator to the computer (it automatically checks and downloads through the connectivity software), but I don't know what the changelog is.

-Clayton

Clayton,

I may have made an incorrect statement ... I'm very sorry for that. Thanks for catching it so soon.

In a thread somewhere I was led to believe that it would not be out until December. Even though it was called the connectivity kit, Maybe what I interpreted as the connectivity kit was actually the classroom mechanism for the teacher to survey the class.

Regardless, Currently, I have a Mac and am not sure if the software on the CD will work.

Again, thanks for the correction.

Ah, yes. I do believe the teacher software will be out later this year. And I also believe that the CD does not contain Mac compatible software as you stated.

Based on the number of Macs in the typical or average American classroom, HP, by not having, as you say, Mac compatible software, may have missed the boat for making an impact on the number of Primes sold to schools.

A few months ago, I almost bought a PC so that I could use the emulator, but passed on that decision. Now, I will buy just to be able to D/L and install ROM upgrades, but I'm okay with that.

This FaceBook link has some good info on Prime bugs and is recent too:

https://www.facebook.com/HPPrimeCalculator/posts/161743610688458?comment_id=205902&offset=0&total_comments=3&ref=notif&notif_t=share_comment

If all you can see is four comments, click the link that says: view more.

Why buy a PC just for that?

VMware Fusion or Parallels will do nicely and you can run both Windows and OS X at the same time... or you can use Boot Camp and run just Windows on your Mac.

(Unless your Mac is a PowerPC Mac, in which case you've got other things to worry about, and buying a new(er) machine is a good idea anyway.)

Anyone else having issues with their prime not auto powering off? Mine would shut off when left idle on its own. Worked just fine for the first week. It does not seem to do that any more. It could be since the update that was installed but I cant remember when I first noticed it was not powering off when idle.

Check the settings -- the timeout value may have been changed accidentally.

I thought of that. However the only timeout setting I can find is the one for the exam mode. Can find one anywhere else.

I may resort to a hard reset and see what happens.

Bug report for the emulator: When you hit CTRL+C to copy particularly large code (19 KB, for example) from the program editor to somewhere else (such as Notepad), the emulator crashes. This makes it impossible to distribute source code of large programs.

I was showing off my HP Prime at World Maker Faire 2013, plugged into USB for power and idle at the main Apps screen. At some point during the first day it simply froze there on the Apps screen, and while the screen staying on was nice for the display, the fact that it was frozen rather shortchanged the demonstration aspect. A quick poke of the Reset button did the trick, but I still don't know why it froze. Not exactly your bug, but related.

I ran into that too, but you can simply copy-paste in several smaller sections.

Sadly, we can't copy partial chunks of a program, the emulator can only copy the entire code at once in the computer clipboard. Within the emulator, we can use its internal clipboard to copy/cut small chunks of programs into separate files or elsewhere in the code, but we can't access that clipboard in Notepad or such stuff (I just tried under Windows 7 64 bits). We have to copy parts of the code using the internal clipboard into separate programs, then copy their content one by one in Notepad using the computer clipboard, which is particularly tedious (especially considering certain programs might end up being 400 KB).