Slashdot Mirror
HP Plans The Uber-Calculator
Compenguin writes "Over at TiCalc.Org information has leaked out about the new HP Xpander. Reported specs:
133MHz RISC processor (downclocked to 66 for power consumption),
320x200 screen 256 shades of gray,
MP3 playing capabilities,
and a "futuristic look."
There is also a rumour flying around that it might run Pocket Linux as its OS. " Check out HP's page as well - and see our prior post on the 49G, the parent to this model.
I wanna see a ZSHELL or USGARD menu screen w/ "Linux" or "bash" as a menu option ;)
da w00t.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
It's probably been said already but I'll say it again:
Batteries, Batteries, Batteries!
Running a fast CPU takes quite a bit of energy, and nobody is going to want a calculator that uses up four AAA batteries in 4 hours.
Another reason is that those old CPUs are quite cheap AND small. Put a 68060 (32bit, much faster) instead of a 68000 in a TI-89 and it'll probably cost a bit more than $140.
Of course, those old calculators probably weren't running 0.18 micron versions of those old CPUs; if they were, they'd probably be running at 66MHz as well.
-- Sig (120 chars) --
Your friendly neighborhood mIRC scripter.
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
TI already has translucent cases for their calculators. You can buy them for $4 each (or $16 for the set of 5, IIRC) from TI's web site.
sup
TI-89 isn't allowed on the ACT, though. I almost found out the hard way. Good thing I bought an 86 instead.
sup
Lisp is dirty?
Anyone that actually knows what the hell is going on in calculus class can probably integrate faster by hand than with a calculator.
If you want numerical integration the calculator comes closer to winning, but only on really tough calulus problems. For undergrad math courses the most powerful calculator that anyone should use is a scientific. Graphing calculators may help people get the right answer, but it doesn't make them any smarter. It just lowers the bar for academic achievement. (Then again, that seems to be what achievement is lately, finding new ways to lower the standards.)
When i got my hp 48G (7-8 years ago) i spent many hours of class playing the built in mine sweeper. if they want to put an mp3 player in something that i could have convinced my parents that i needed, i'm all for that.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
Jesus H. Kee-rist, that's just the thing you need here in the year-2000 United States of Amerika, our new police state. Absolutely perfect to get your ass shot.
Someday I should tell you about the day a lady copy pulled a gun on me because she saw I had a ninety-glass in a case hanging from my belt.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Even worse than the piss poor keys on the HP49, is the fact that virtually none of the keys *do* anything directly. It's the same problem that the TI89/92 have: lots of power, but you have to go through 4 menus to do get to it. The HP48GX on the other hand, has lots of keys which directly access functions. Two key strokes and the entire stack of complex numbers is converted from rectagular to polar, and vice versa.
I did a direct comparison with my girlfriend. She had a TI89 and I had an HP48GX. To enter a matrix into her calculator and perform a couple simple operations, took about 20 more key strokes than my mine.
yes, but sometimes it takes *all* of the calculus functionality of my hp 48G to balance my checkbook.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
I'm seeing a lot of posts along the lines of what's the point 133mhz calculator or is it a calculator or a PDA. In truth it sounds more like a PDA than a calculator. So why not get a PDA in stead?
Many reasons
1. Interface
The Palms interface is optimised for use as an organisor, not a handy interface to use in a 3-hour math exam.
2. Software
I am probably among a select few people in that I know almost all of the HP48's fuctions (and used them for usefull purposes in my engineering classes). The HPs software is easly worth the cost of the calculator, now with the 49G and more symbolic stuff this is even more true. Would you want to load your MathCAD, Maple and Mathlab on you palm.
Why do I want this? I see this as being an all purpose data collector and field analysis tool. For me to do some field work requires both a calculator and a laptop. A PDA optimised for engineering use would kill two birds with one stone. Right know I thinking I could port or program specialized engineer software to it and be able to design revisions quickly and accurately in the field. Another use for this device is a data collector (ala survey total stations and GPS) the HP48GX is still a industry standard in this deparment but is getting too old and slow to be used in new inovations, like real time GIS data while you survey.
Just my two cents worth.
Well, I can and do program my HP48GX right from the keyboard. (I wrote a simple little program just this morning while in the field.) And I have a LISP interpreter and also a copy of Turbo C v.2.0 (which I bought back in 1989!) on my HP200LX. Can you write any program at all for use on a Palm Pilot, no matter how trivial, on the Palm Pilot itself? Can you write a program for Windows CE on a Windows CE machine? No, you need a cross-compiler or something like that (and a damn costly one too) running on another real computer. Yeah, wow, a Palm Pilot or a WinCE PDA have processors that can run circles around the 80186 in my HP200LX, but you can't program it on itself, so as far as I am concerned my HP200LX still blows away any PDA currently shipping.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
OT, but...
The Avigo was positioned to try and dethrone the PalmPilot (not the Palm III, V, or VII, mind you -- just the PalmPilot). Although it had some decent features, TI effectively killed its appeal to the geek set by announcing that there would be no third-party anything. That's right -- you couldn't develop any hardware or software for it, and there were no provisions to install new software at all. TI is a very control-freakish company. You can't even link your calculator to a PC without buying a ~$40 link cable, or building your own for about $5 in parts.
Compare this to the original Pilot, which had dozens of applications coded in gcc and other free tools before the official Windows SDK was even released.
Of course, what makes this thread most off-topic is the fact that this calculator that was just announced is made by HP, not TI.
For more information, click here.
Guess HP's gone downhill. I ran my HP41 over with a Chevy Suburban (yeah it was lying in soft sand, but still, a Suburban) and a while later dropped it in eighteen inches of water and it still is running, fifteen-plus years after I bought it.
I sure hope the HP48GX is made of stronger stuff than that 49 the top poster was complaining about, because I take it in the field daily to do land surveying, and we surveyors just destroy equipment, it comes with the territory. On the other hand, if it breaks it's not all that bad, because unlike my old 41, that 48GX is the company's property, not my own personal purchase.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I can't believe they changed the styling to look so bad. I'm an engineer, not an art student, so why should my calculator look like a work of art. Give me something square, durable, RPN or give me death!
I'm not giving my 48G up any time soon... no matter how "underpowered" it is.
I bought a HP 49G some months ago, and as you say, it isn't very useful. I haven't touched it yet (sticking to a very old but handy small HP calculator, I do need RPM), it's just to big and complicated.
Good God this is wonderful! Is it stable? I take back the negative things I said elsewhere about Palms. In fact, I think I'll go shopping and check out some prices. Now if I can only find a Palm-compatible PDA which accepts compact flash memory cards, so I can store a decent amount of data in there... Thank you for posting this!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I knew a guy who worked at HP's terminal division about 20 years ago. They developed a "terminal" that ran Basic, had several processors (a 68k and some 8088, if I remember) cassette drives and maybe even a floppy. I think it also had color graphics capability. The small computer division got wind of it and had it killed on the grounds that was encroaching on their territory.
And the teachers thought they had it bad when they made us put electrical tape over our IR ports . . .
funny munging
Is this the name for the next generation PDA's, this "calculator"?
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
A search on PalmGear returns 260 matches for "calculator." This includes several RPN calculators, MathPad for evaluating many equations simultaneously (GREAT for Physics work) and even a powerful graphing calculator. Some of these tools aren't free, but for a professional they might just be worth the price.
For more information, click here.
I hope that HP gets their act together before releasing the new calculator because, overall, the quality of the HP49 is lousy IMHO. I've owned a 49 since the initial release and after several ROM updates and multiple exchanges of the hardware under warranty, I feel like I paid $180 to beta test their product.
I think the issue is probably money. A color screen would cost a good bit more than a b&w screen wouldn't it? If they sprung for color they might have to leave out the ability to play MP3s or something to keep the price tolerable. *GASP* Heaven forbid we trade entertainment for productivity!
Let me guess - the futuristic look is a big red and white plastic box, kind of like an ice chest.
Oh, wait - that is an ice chest. For overclockers to carry it around in.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There's nothing worse than sitting in an exam and finding a complex integration taking 10 seconds+ to carry out. If i'd bothered to learn stuff I could probably get the questions done almost as fast doing them myself.
I've noticed a downward turn in calculator interfaces lately. My TI-85 was great, but when TI put out the 89, they decided to replace it with the slow, klunky menu interface from the 92. Sometimes, making a calculator work more like a computer isn't the best thing to do. Why should I need to [F1] [8] [Clear] to clear the home screen and entry line when I used to be able to do it in one button press, and when I did that, the screen cleared faster.
-Splat
So as though the NYT weren't enough, Thomas Friedman has a /. account now! But the Polish working class want their pensions and health care system back! youse dirty capitalist &^%$#.
Yours red Willy - WKiernan@concentric.net
Hmmm, this could be the beginning of something interesting...
e r><grep_k ey><|_key>/etc/passwd<enter><cat_key>
:)
;) Shouldn't "Plain Old Text" _mean_ "Plain Old Text?"
Okay, first, you'd likely want keys on your "LinuxCalc" for things like mv, cat, grep, cut, and of course for things like | and <. Lotsa keys, just like any decent HP calculator. (I still LOVE my 11C! - it still works, and it's 15 years old!)
Okay, so, you'd type:
file1<enter>file2<enter><mv_key> for RPN. Simple!
For pipelining, you'd probably have to go backwards:
-d:<enter>-f7<enter><cut_key><|_key>fascdot<ent
I think. The pipelining one is hard, to be sure...you might need a special key to prevent it from calculating those first steps immediately. Of course, maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing. Have it pipe the current value to something else. Certainly RPN would make for an interesting UI...someone up to modifying Bash?
ps That was a pain in the ass to correctly enter all those html codes for the < & > marks. I hope you all appreciate that.
RPN is superior to the "normal" way (does it even have a name?). Yes, it does. The "normal" way is called infix notation. RPN is Postfix notation, and a posibility exists to do prefix notation, but we just pretend that doesn't exist.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Be careful with the TI-92. It can do symbolic algebra, and has a full QWERTY keyboard.
Some places and school will disallow a calculator that has either of the two above traits. You may not be able to use a TI-92 in a calc class, nor can you use it on the SATs. Ask your math department about approved calculators.
These calculators are expensive, so plan ahead. I bought my TI-82 in 1996 during high school and was able to use it all the way through college math.
It's a conspiracy to drive up the sales of batteries. My 48G goes through enough AAAs just acting as a remote control for Winamp.
The Lambda operator and the executable blocks are what you're thinking. It allows you to put a normally executable operator on the stack instead: (lambda) ls (lambda) > (lambda) | |
æeee!
Why the hell would i want my Calculator to play MP3's? Geez, there's convergance, and then theres convergance.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Um, the HP49 has had a translucent case before TI even considered the idea.
Not that it matters.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
Aw yeah. That'll be one sweet calculator. If I combine this and my fashionable pocket protectors, I'll be the perfect chick repellant.
--
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
My first calculator was an HP-25. In fact, I learned programming on it. RPN is superior to the "normal" way (does it even have a name?).
I wrote a cool Fibonacci generator on the HP-25. First you seed the stack with a 0 and a 1. The program is
01 - Push
02 - Push
03 - Pop
04 - Pop
05 - +
06 - Goto 01
Check out the stats on HPs 49G. It has the option to display in 'textbook mode', much like the TI-89/92. Of course the advantage will always be to the company who has access to (and uses) the latest greatest technology.
This is a great product. If you've ever seen the communities that have sprung up over Ti's 8x line, then you'll know what uses these things have been put to. There are people that write custom OSs for TI's calculators (around 8-10 MHz on 32-128 KB of RAM.) People figure out how to make the thing generate sound through the serial port, how to overclock it, how to make it drive a radio, how to write custom assembly for it, all kinds of neat things. It brings a hackerish feeling that you really don't get these days. Programming the TIs is like programming those old computers. You get to program directly to the hardware, you have to come up with tricks to get the thing to do what you want, you have to find nifty uses for the built in hardware. That's real hacking. What really makes them so popular is that they're cheap and flexible. I really hope that HP manages to keep the price of this thing under $150, or else it really won't work. There are already other HPCs on the market, and this product needs to be different. Since it addresses the main problems with TI's series (poor screen resolution, slow screen response, and limited CPU power) this product could really be cool if priced appropriatly.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Found this link on the discussion about the new Palm VIIx. This is one bad ass piece of hardware. How's a Pilot with a 1GB microdrive do you for storage? : ) TRG Pro
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
I've been interested in putting Linux on an ultra-portable device like this, and if this does run Mobile Linux (and if it doesn't, it will in short order) then it's time for some ultra-portable nethack playing! Woohoo!
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
Great!! Now I can listen to mp3s in lecture in addition to playing Tetris!
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
I would think that it would be far more useful to use those shades of grey for antialiasing purposes, so that the curves on your graph would look smoother. It could mean easier to read fonts, too.
- Mike
HP has a history about being way more hacker-friendly than the other calculator manufacturers regarding software and packaging - including a serial connector cable/PC software instead of selling it separately, making sweet stuff like compilers available, using established transfer protocols instead of proprietary, and of course the lovely RPN.. All for a reasonably low price.
If they can keep up with their previous cost-to-coolness ratio, I'm definitely going to buy one. Otherwise I'll probably have troubles resisting my urge to nick one ;)
--
Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
I've often been tempted by a new calculator, one of the Casio or TI graphical ones would be nice, so would a monster from HP. All that processing power.........
:)
Problem is I've found that in the real world outside of things like Physics degrees and whatnot these extra functions seem unnecessary. I've a laptop and access to a huge SGI mainframe if I need to do serious and/or graphical calculations and for the rest I find my Casio fx-991 (circa 1987 I guess) still works perfectly. Solar Powered too.
Maybe I'm a luddite or maybe I don't see the point (equally, there might be people out there who need a pocket-sized calculator that can play MP3s, runs linux etc etc). I guess if it was my only machine but I don;t want to carry around a PDA and a heavy calculator. Might as well carry my laptop and get better functionality, more mp3 storage, decent games and a useful screen for graphical work.
Convergence like this is odd because what's happening is that everything is tending to become the same. Computers, taht can do everything are slowly shrinking and becoming more easily portable (longer battery life, lighter, better screens etc) whilst PDAs and palmtops are gaining faster processors and the ability to do decent maths, play mp3s etc. Now calculators are heading in the same direction but from a different tack. So eventually we end up with the same thing.
I also find it annoying to carry around a multiplicity of items, It's bad enough with a mobile phone and a laptop (which I need to carry for my job). I can't be hassled carrying a pda and a calculator, especially when the start duplicating functions. I'd end up spending every night synch-ing everything to make sure the one mp3 I was desperate to listen to was on everything, just in case I lost or forgot the one gadget it was on. Nightmare!
I want one device that has everything I need on it and is easy and simple to back up in the evenings. Yes, I'd probably use lots of the cool functions on a new HP calculator and I like RPN but I've Mathematica, fortran amd others, not to mention all sorts of modelling and fem packages available on my laptop.
I'll shut up now
troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
My Palm Pilot calculator does math, trig, financial (TVM), logic, statistics, as well as time, weight, length, area, temperature, volume, power/energy and currency conversions. Try to integrate on your HP/Ti calc.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Ok, it's funny...
But you can really redirect a Linux console to the HP48!
Check it out...
From the URL:
Here it is: a fast and very complete terminal emulator for HP48 with a lot of features! Intended as terminal for a Linux system, but useful for other purposes as well.
It works like a charm...I am even able to connect my HP48GX to my Garmin GPS II+ (with other software of course)...:-)
Yours
Michael
I found powerOne Finance, and I liked it so much--well, I didn't buy the company, but I did write a review of the program on Themestream explaining what it does, how to use it, and how it helped me so much in that class.
85-90% of the problems in that class involved Time Value of Money, and powerOne's TVM worksheet put me one up on all the people who had to enter one line at a time into those stinky little business calculators. Worked great!
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Oh well, at least I'll be able to use my 89 on standardized tests like the APs and SATs (I'm a high schooler). I doubt they'd let you get away with and MP3 playing monster of a calculator on those tests. That won't stop me from getting one, of course (unless TI comes out with a similar product).
Trying is the first step toward failure. - Homer Simpson
DRAW!
Geez. With that sweet 256-grey scale graphical equalizer and plugins...and about 100 keys to control the volumes, song to play, etc.
I can't see why I'd get any other MP3 player, ever.
quite true!
Time does not wait.
sure it has more power that most people need but its the geek factor. imagine being in math class and your friend is on his/her "pretty print" display and you turn and say "check out my 8-bit x server, im playing quake and running an http server.....FROM MY FUCKING CALCULATOR!!"
Just what I want. To do my trig homework to some soothing mp3s. Now I can't wait for math class to start AntiHero 'Windows users can right click, select "save as" and wait for the inevitable blue screen and general protection crash. Apple users can Control-Click, get some error about no "volume mount", and wonder about when their last backup was made...Linux users can wipe that smug grin off their face and go twirl their propeller caps'
And most Germans wouldn't find Massachusetts either
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
The thing codenamed Xpander is going to be essentially an PDA specialized as a teaching tool and for student use.
The _real_ HP successor calculator, codenamed Ranger, is still coming...
(This all from public discussion from the designers/programmers over on comp.sys.hp48. Y'know, Usenet? The thing slashdot-type weblogs were supposed to replace?)
Why not run WinCE on this thing, or a pocket version of HP's Unix?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
MP3 capabilities? For the love of god of your choice, why? It's tarting to sound like a WinCE handheld! More importantly, MP3 playing would probably get it banned from school use entirely.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
I think a calculator is defined more by the UI than the functions it provides. I don't care how feature-complete a graphical (or text-based?) calculator program may be, I'll still be faster and more productive using my old HP (assuming I don't need online help, which is a pretty big assumption). If they're making the UI much more generic to allow MP3 playing, then that's bad, but if it still looks like a calculator, it's still a calculator to me.
Quote: ...By pressing on a special key it plays a little melody"
"I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
Calculators and music. Together again, for the first time. Yay.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
PDA interfaces are generally designed for organizer type things, which can be reduced the a small set of functions that generally need to be accessed at the same time. Have you seen an HP calculator with all those keys? A stylus-driven menu system is much too slow and inconvient for the number of functions required by a modern programmable calculator. This is why even the most advanced Palm calculator software doesn't come close to the complexity inherant in these things; you may use it for quick 4-function calculations, but for hardcore stuff, you're going ditch that PDA and its clunky interface.
Are you going to sit in math class trying to tap your way through a tough calculus problem? I think not.
--
I think universities in the UK particularly still put way too much emphasis on your mathematical abilities (when u aren't studying maths).
:)
Personally I cant see why it makes any difference whether or not I need a calculator to work out a 2nd order linear differential equation, but it would make more sense to lay the emphasis on applying that to circuits and physics models.
Mind you as it happens i'm quite happy to pick up marks for copying the answers from my calculator
In fact, I learned programming on it. RPN is superior to the "normal" way
close. prefix notation is superior to the "normal" way. go learn more about the programming language lisp.
(does it even have a name?).
the "normal" was is called "infix".
I was sure someone would mention this.. the number one thing I love about my HP48 (and my former HP100LX) was the wonderful tactile response of the keys. It made up for not being able to have large keys, and you knew when you pressed something - you got a nice *thuck* sound.
The 49 IIRC doens't have the nice keys, and I hope this one does (although, what I'd like even more is a clip on keyboard for my palm that has the tactile keys in a 5 x 5 matrix or something. (Anyone want to manufacture that? I'll buy one now)
I just home the engineers strangled whoever made the descision not to use the nice keys! Let's make it in pretty "blueberry", but we'll through away a primary usability factor because it'll save $4/unit. Not to mention axing IR (like anyone ever used it to talk in an exam; You got like 2 feet max unless you heavily modified it and/or designed an amplifier/repeater box..)
..don't panic
massachusets is also an independent country of 80 million people, which has influenced world history for centuries and has been at the center of two world wars. also, many germans have/had grandfothers that fought or died in massachusets, and many more come from massachusets families.
oh, and let's not forget the boston wall and the reunification of massachusets which have been all over TV for last ten years.
not trying to say that americans are stupid or anything... but massachusets to germans ain't what germany should be to americans.
z.
disclaimer: I might be right.
You can use an IR link on a TI calculator to simulate a remote control. Never tried it, but sounds pretty neat.
-Splat
The other thing that they could do is just make a really advanced palm calculator and sell it for $50-$100. I sent this message a while back to Texas instruments:
I got this response back::
Anyway, I'm sticking with my Ti-89 and still haven't gotten a PDA because I really see it as an expensive toy. If i could use it to do math, it would be a real incentive to buy one. Since somebody recently released a Ti-85 emulator for Psion, a palm version is hopefully coming.
I wholehartedly disagree.
Then again, I only have experience on that old-ass POS TI-82 I used in Calculus. So my point of view is limited. But oh, how I have wished for a TI emulator for the Palm OS.
I find the TI-82's keyboard layout awkward and clunky compared to the flexibility that one might be able to build into a palm app. (OR! a springboard module, hint hint handspring!) For those familiar with the keypad layout, I'm sure a palm app could be devised which emulated the same on-screen.
Especially when programming. I've often wished for a QWERTY keypad layout on the calc. I can tap out the function names much faster than I can pull them up using the TI-82's menu system.
Are you going to sit in math class trying to tap your way through a tough calculus problem? I think not.
Given the possibilities of interface customization, the built in IR port (no TI-Link cable required!), the superior graphics and speed (again, TI-82 experience only)... I'd much prefer that route over the HP Calc. All it would really take is some planning, and good, intuitive interface design.
http://www.hpmuseum.org/
--
Peter
the whole point of my post was that the argument "it's not bad that americans don't know where germany is because germans don't know where massachusetts is" is crap.
forget the world influence. check out the size:
massachusetts is the size of slovenia and has the population of slovakia. well, how many americans know that these countries exist, let alone where they are or that they are in fact two different countries?
z.
and again, this has nothing to do with americans being stupid. but the equation "US:Germany=Germany:Massachusetts" stinks.
disclaimer: I might be right.
HP calc beowulf cluster... you could play quake while in discrete math!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
What's the number one most hated thing about Lisp? Five million parentheses per line. Compare Forth, with zero parentheses per line (unless you want to write comments).
Postfix is great. It simplifies everything into a sequence of simple actions. Push number, push number, add top 2 numbers on stack; as Chuck Moore says, it's so simple it should be taught to kids after counting and before long division. It is programming the way real computers work, basically the world's best macro processor for assembly language.
Forth is known for encouraging highly compact and efficient code, because it's basically super assembly language. Lisp is known for encouraging "elegant" inefficient code, because its design is not based on the way computers work at all, but rather on the lambda calculus, a theoretical construct of expression simplification. Even working things like numbers into the lambda calculus involves hideous kludges. Writing efficient code in Lisp means using the theoretically kludged in (but computationally simple and efficient) imperative features and C-style looping constructs, and thereby losing any reason you had for touching Lisp in the first place.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
"..reduced the a small set of functions.."
That should be to.
--
Why does every piece of hardware listed on /. have a 'might run linux' rumor attached to it. If a rumor really exists, provide a link to it to show us that it's not just another vapor-linux story.
Reality is, when I buy a piece of equipment which has mostly proprietary hardware in it, I want the OS to be made FOR that piece of hardware. Not something like Linux hacked-to-the-hills to run on it.
Mind you, the HP is still faster, though not by much. And, alas, I'm not much called upon to integrate arbitrary functions anymore.
I'm not opposed to using technology to make our lives easier, but I'm concerned that the emergence of products like this mother-of-all-calculators will eliminate the need to really learn anything. Issues about ignorance aside, being able to perform many of these mathematical operations mentally promotes logical thinking, discipline, etc. all of which are crucial skills in the knowledge-centric workplace which seems to be emerging.
Bring on the tech, but please, teachers, don't let students get away with simple button-pressing
He who laughs last thinks slowest.
Still easier yet. If it really worked like an HP calculator, the result of each op would be pushed to the stack, so you woldn't need the piping at all.
... For the "Futuristic look"...
:-)
...Which of course we all know means it will come in 4 different translucent coloured cases
Gfunk007
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I've always awed at the ignorance amounst the teachers who allow students to use Graphing Calculators where only simple computations are needed. They are an obvious threat, cheating wise.
My first year university math classes (I only had to take 1 calc, 1 stats and 1 algebra/geometry) Had a strict rule that, not only were you not allowed a graphing/programmable calculator, you had to have a specific model that the math department had aproved. If you were caught with any other calculator (even a simpler model) they would not let you use it.
Buy at TI85. Like you said, it is what they are using in the book, which will definately simplify your life. Plus it is a very decent calculator. And, you can ZShell on it, and program in Zilog80 asm.
Of course, it's no TI92, what with it's symbolic integration, but you aren't going to need that for Algebra2. In fact, you aren't even going to need it for Calculus.
Well, I take that back. When you take Calculus, the TI92 is definately nice when doing homework, because you can use it to check your answers. Just don't come to use it as a crutch. I own both a TI85 and a TI82, and the 85 gets much much much more day to day use.
Some guy named Chris
German for "Super" eg. Superman = Ubermensch
Dirt doesn't need luck.
I've read quite a few posts where people seem to be ripping on the HP49G, saying the hardware is low quality and the software is buggy.
I *love* my HP 48GX, and find it difficult to believe that the successor would suck so hard. Has anyone out there upgraded from the 48 to the 49? Can you provide an objective comparison of the two models?
The TI-89 has 'pretty print' or something similarly named. It prints equations such as ((3+4)/(5*3) + 1/(2-5)) the way you would write them on paper... So its much less confusing. Do HP's support this?
The calculator app that ships with Palms works better if you don't use a stylus. There's a reason the button-images are so big: you can use your fingers. On the other hand, palm screens tend to be pretty fragile... you may not want to.
Good god, man. Don't you realize there is a world wide shortage of parentheses? Entire forests of the things have been clearcut just to supply the few Lisp programmers in the world. Don't encourage waste.
but... can it integrate symbolically, multiply arbitrary length numbers, do trig functions, and draw 3D graphs? I agree, its maybe better than a 4-function calculator, but I like my 92 a lot more than a little 4-function (or scientific). As soon as you add reasonable size buttons to do all that, it fills up the whole screen and is unusable. Also, I like being able to feel the buttons and their edges. I can't touch type without it.
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I certainly agree with your statement. However, 99% of the population is a mere download away from being able to MP3-encode a self-recorded .wav, while other formats are not quite as accessible to the general public. That alone gives MP3s at least a little bit of an advantage.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
luckman
luckman
I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
This remember me an old joke. When the TI 92 appeared in France, many guys say that with a calc like this one, you could go to Polytechnique (one of the most valued "Grande Ecole") without any problem. Someone pointed that Polytechnique would have hired the calc since it is far less expensive that the user. :)
In my mean, all the power we put in calc will go in games. Algebric capabilities will become useless. If you are a scientist, you will use Maple or Mathematica. If you are at school, the calc will not be allowed.
In fact, it will just be a new geek-tool.
I don't believe this- a machine with more processing power than my trusty Apple Macintosh 630-CD (66MHz!) being billed as a "pocket caclulator". *Sigh* Time to follow-up on my long-standing plans and convert my Mac's lousy 14 inch screen into a fish tank...
keyboard is specialized. I know, there's that little numeric thingy on the right, but it's still hard to use. Where's the parenthesis, exponentiation, integration, log, trig, and other buttons?
the keyboard is right next to the screen. Also, any program needs either mouse or typing to do anything interesting, and shifting b/w the little keypad and the full keyboard is a pain.
performance: Even if you write a good math software package for a PDA, a large part of that calculator's price tag goes to developing a very FAST math package. I tried writing some of it over, and it went SLOW. Palm doesn't want to add $10 to the list price so their PDA can integrate effectively. HP is fine adding $10 to list so it can do appointments, MP3, and other features, because people will pay for that (and the 66MHz processor).
lastly, anyone know how long the batteries last? My 92 runs 6mo at my usage pattern on 4AA. That's a lot of hours.
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Good point, but the calc pgms I've seen for the Palm don't use much in the way of menus - they use buttons on the screen. I'll admit that it's slightly faster to push buttons rather than tap 'virtual' buttons on the screen, but once you get used to it there's not much difference. Not enough (for me anyway) to justify the expense.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
A built-in MP3 player doesn't just mean that you can listen to music in math or science class, it has more formal uses as well, especially in tutorials.
The most likely tutorial application will probably be in natural language courses, but there is an even more appropriate one for which calculation and sound are necessary partners: computer music + sound sythesis design and performance. It's a mathematical subject that benefits greatly from graphic representation and obviously requires sound as well. This new HP sounds like an ideal portable tool for studies in this area.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Alright, another tech company insisting on cramming more extraneous features into its once simple products! What I need now is for my Mead Five-Star notebook to play MP3s and my Papermate pen to run Linux. And I can't wait for the day when I can make an awesome Beowulf cluster out of my Trapper Keepers.
I can't wait to assemble a Beowulf cluster out of these signatures.
People like you just suck.
Could Someone help? ;-) but are there any other ones out there for around the same price? But I have to be able to follow the directions from the teacher easily, so I really dn't want one that has a lot of different buttons than the TI-85 (thats the one they use for examples in the book)
I need a Calculator for Algebra2 this coming school year, and don't know what to get,
I'm thinking of getting a TI-86plus (more flashrom for games
Thanks
p.s. Sorry about the above post, I hit enter to early
First of all, this doesn't sound much like a calculator. It sounds more like a PDA. I mean the thing can play mp3s - at some point you can't call it a calculator anymore.
:-)
It does sound like a calculator, and I imagine it definitely will be. Your point about it playing mp3s really uncovers the opinion that most people have about mp3s - that they exist purely for listening to and the transportation of music. When you actually think about it, the ability to be able to give some sort of sound output might be quite useful - the ability to be able to load a program onto the thing that demonstrates a particular set of functions or area of mathematics, guided along by a helpful voice is something I would imagine that a lot of teachers would love to see.
To be honest, there is little work that I do these days that requires this sort of power and functionality (bit of sysadmin, bit of project management, all can be done on a 4-function calc or in Excel for the project stuff) and to be honest the only thing I could see myself doing is x^y stuff for interest rate calculation (not worth the rumoured $250 price tag), but I can see why this little beast is going to be desirable. However, I'd say that if HP are doing this, then there is a good chance TI will be upping the ante at some point soon. Calculator Wars - you've gotta love it!
funny munging
Personally, I'm waiting for a Matlab port to a Palm/PocketPC device.
OK, a calculator was a nice thing to have back in high-school (or any equivalent), but I haven't used mine in years, don't even know where it is. If you do anything serious (beyond the product of two real numbers, which I do on my cell phone :-)), either you do mathematical analysis or something, or you don't want to program your stuff on a tiny screen, you need a real editor, and once your there, you might as well use a real computer.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
My Palm Pilot calculator does math, trig, financial (TVM), logic, statistics, as well as time, weight, length, area, temperature, volume, power/energy and currency conversions. Try to integrate on your HP/Ti calc.
He meant integrate, as in calculus, which is something TI and HP calculators do quite well. While there is no reason why a symbolic math program couldn't be written for a Palm Pilot, I haven't seen one -- it would be considerbly harder to write than trivial unit conversion programs.
You can actually pop off the letters on the TI-92 and rearrange them - now, that's not going to actually do you any good, but you can make the letters look like they're DVORAK.
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
German: above, greater.
But that's only sorta the point. I can touch-type on my 92. It only took a couple days to figure it out. I can't touch-type with a stylus. And, there's how much screen left at that point? I mean, the specialized keyboard on my 92 (not counting the qwerty part) is almost as big as a palm screen anyway.
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Of course, after shipping it will be discovered that the calculator will only be able to display 128 shades of grey.
In the great HP tradition of innovation...
Vote Technocratic! Government by killer robots!
After a little searching on the web, I found a HP 49 FAQ that claimed 100!*100! should take 1.5 seconds on the HP49, and about 4 seconds on the TI-89. Now, I don't know if this is a realistic benchmark or not but I know that on my 49G it took over 4 seconds. After reading the FAQ some more, I found a section about the ON-D menu.
Suspecting that my 49G was defective, I ran the ROM and RAM tests. The FullROM (7) test yielded an error, but it turns out this is a bug in the software release I'm using. Then, I tried the FROM Format (9) option, which is listed in the FAQ as "Formats (defrags?) Flash ROM." Bingo! 100!*100! took less than a second, and overall it is operating as it did when I first bought it.
If you haven't tried the FROM format command, give it a try, it might speed things up again. ON-D, then 9. Oh, then I did a Q for reboot (old habits die hard).
So where can I download a gameboy emulator for this calculator so my productivity can really be shot.
:)
And if we're lucky, we won't run into what we have with TI, where to use the flashrom on your calculator to store (and run) programs, you have to spend $200+ for a dev kit, which lets you get 10 programs "signed"
Why the HP calculators are better than TI's:
Let's see, where to start. I'll start with this:
HP uses the most out of there limited hardware.
Use there own home-made processor (for the graphing calcultors as of yet)
An incredible amount of assembler support for us coders
There (HP) OS is written in Saturn assembler while TI's OS for there 89 and 92+ is written in C
Need I list any others?
This is just a small list that I could think of off the top of my head. HP calculators are more geared towards higher educated individuals but, it can also be used for people in lower educated areas (it has a +, -, *, / sign doesn't it?). I remember there being an article here on Slashdot about which brand to buy. I would highly recommend an HP-48G or 49G. Since they will be able to use that for the rest of there lives, just about. If your buying calculators for games, the buy a TI-86. If you want the mathematical capabilities out of the calculator, buy an HP-49G.
I found out about this calculator a couple months ago and the price was ranged at about $250 in american dollars. If I wasn't already putting money aside for a video card, I would start putting money aside for this upcoming calculator. Something's got to give...
For the best HP calculator games/apps, try out hpcalc.org.
Have a nice day,
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
First of all, this doesn't sound much like a calculator. It sounds more like a PDA. I mean the thing can play mp3s - at some point you can't call it a calculator anymore.
Secondly, PalmPilots, et al. are really the calculators to end all calculators anyway. Why buy a piece of hardware that only does one thing, when you could have one that runs whatever calculator software you like and a bunch of other stuff too. Want a calculator that uses infix notation? Install this application. Prefer RPN? Use this other program. Hell, use them both!
The days of dedicated hardware are gone. Even game consoles can do other things besides play games.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Can you just imagine having to put your command line args in RPN?
/etc/passwd | grep fascdot | cut -d: -f7
MyCalc%> mv file1 file2
error: argument missing
MyCalc%> file1 file2 mv
MyCalc%> cat
cut: error: argument "|" is invalid
(I was going to re-write that in RPN, but I can't even figure out how pipelining would work--so forget it)
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Slightly more seriously (and I say slightly with a reason) has anyone ever considered a fully scientific/graphing calc program for a handheld? It would seem that, with the right software, the removal of the linear input requirements would help your IO. Of course, I'm not sure if the average Palm has enough muscle to push out that kind of processing, and this Xpander almost certainly has a high-level math-optimized instruction set or coprocessor.
Oh how I pine for the days of yore, when we wrote real code on a numeric keypad (with trig functions for added fun!) and our upgrades to 20 mHz made us demigods.
funny munging
I have fallen in love with R check out http://www.r-project.org/, and IMHO, it beats MATLAB clearly. R is a GPLed package, mainly for statistics and granted, it lacks things that MATLAB has, particulary in the image and signal processing area, but I can't see anything that would exclude R from doing everything there. Since it is Open Source, it is just start working on it.
) -1);
:-)
Actually, I was sitting this very moment writing some code that I have shamelessly snatched from MATLAB's interpn.m and writing it in R for my personal use, and while I haven't tested this code yet, I just replaced the code
s = cell(size(y));
for i=1:length(s),
s{i} = 1 + (y{i}-x{i}(1))/(x{i}(xprodsiz(i))-x{i}(1))*(siz(i
end
end
for i=length(s):-1:1, ssiz{i} = size(s{i}); end
if ~isequal(ssiz{:}), error('Y1,Y2,Y3, etc. must be the same size.');
end
sout = cell(size(s));
for i=1:length(s),
sout{i} = find((s{i}<1) | (s{i}>siz(i)));
if ~isempty(sout{i}), s{i}(sout{i}) = ones(size(sout{i})); end
end
with
if(diff(sapply(y, length)) != 0) stop("y's must be of the same length")
s <- sapply(1:length(y), function(i) {
tmp <- (1 + (y[[i]] - x[[i]][1]) /
(x[[i]][xprodsiz[i]] - x[[i]][1]) *
(siz[i] - 1))
ifelse(tmp < 1 | tmp > siz[i], tmp, 1)})
in R. Neat, eh? Yep, I don't know that this works, but...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I already carry around a TI-89 calc, and a palm. Am I going to need to get one of those photographers vests?
Pax Digitalia
I'm not sure about this time period but, if I recall correctly, the translucent color slide cases was TI's response to the futuristic look of the HP-49G. Now, I could be wrong but I'm almost positive that what I said is correct. Also, forgotten in the article and post, is the fact that the main programming language used for programming will be C++ and Java. Also, will be released around September (hopefully).
Have a nice day,
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
can I put it into hexadecimal mode and make it say "b0ll0c5"?
That's the problem with color, it uses much more battery power than grayscale if you have too much of it. 40 hours is not enough for a calculator you are going to use every day in school. My Casio 9850Ga+ uses 3 colors and lasts several months of multi-hour a day use before I have to replace the batteries. I think I replaced it 3x all year, and I probably used it 3hrs a day.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
Well I do have something against Reversing Polish Nation! Even though the land has history of communism and strange language with who-knows-how many different s-letters, no nation whatsoever deserves that horrible fate! So if HP is still trying to reverse that beautiful country, I say we must STOP IT! Stand up and vote with your pockets, buy no more HP-pocket-thingies!
Our university (Edinburgh, Scotland) have the brilliantly thought out system for determining which calculators give an unfair advantage :) they simply decided that anything that sported a Qwerty keyboard would be banned.
My friends and I went to fair lengths to import Ti-89's before they were available in the UK and another of my friends managed to get an HP (i think) with an AZERTY keyboard (from france).
I actually do use my calculators powers quite well, particularly when it comes to solving things like differential equations and just as a simple tool to remind me of integrating principles
This is easier than you suggest, "|" is already in postfix, and the expression should be left-to-right, not right-to-left.
/etc/passswd cat | fascdot grep | -d: -f7 cut
Well if this is like any other HP calculator or any HP product in general, I'm sure they will find someway to screw it up. Am I the only one that finds the HP-49G a pain to use, especially in a class or on a test? I use the TI-89 for anthing important, and the 49 to keep the papers from flying off my desk. The user interface is awful, and the key combos to do even simple functions are rediculous sometimes. Not only that, but I don't want to sit there forever while that little 4 MHz Saturn processor thinks and thinks and thinks, and don't even get me started on that so-called step-by-step differentiating and integrating and the fun of programming in RPN. I'll have to take a look at this new calculator when it comes out, but I sure hope HP will find some people capable of mixing powerful functions and user-friendliness.
HP say " now you'll have the power to teach math, not calculator usage.". Speaking as someone who has taught maths to first year undergraduate students, graphical calulators are not a substitute for rigourous thinking and analysis. All you learn with a calculator is how to draw pretty pictures, which tend to lead to unjustified and incorrect conclusions about the underlying mathematics. If you do want to program and draw pretty pictures then use Matlab (I do). Then you'll know how to use a tool which has some worth out in the big wide world. If you want to understand mathematics properly, then learn some calculus and how to curve sketch rigouously.
Looks like it could be a nice toy though. I wonder if they will send me a sample? :-) Some kind of interface (serial, IR) would be nice ...
"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death."
I would not be caught dead with an 82, becuase of its lack of advanced math functions. I even prefer my TI-86 over the 'more advanced' 89, because it has some annoying features, no Nth roots, instead you have to goto x^(1/n). Basically calculators add more functionality and advanced features. Of course, algabraic manipulation is a NICE thing to have on the 89. :P
So are there going to be web sites poping up everywhere boasting how they overclocked their calculator to 133Mhz so they can do their calculus homework faster!
I wonder how long it will take before someone comes along with instructions for bringing it back up to 133MHz. It would eat batteries like crazy, but get rechargables, or plug it into the wall.
Math was one of my majors in college, and I am now working in theoretical chemistry. How often do I use a calculator? About once a week or so. A calculator is going to help very little with real mathematics, and even a supercomputer is rather limited in doing anything but crunch numbers (and who's going to write the programs, eh?). All I need is a pen and paper for most things, a calculator for arithmetic, and a computer for any arithmetic the calculator can't handle (which isn't very often). Anyone listening to mp3s instead of doing their homework isn't being helped out at all by having an advanced calculator.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
In one of my physics classes in college, the professor cleared the memory of everybody's calculators before taking the test. This was not good for those of us who had aquired years worth of programs (coded while sitting through boring lectures), and since I didn't know anyone else with a TI82 (it was old, but I liked it more that the newer ones), so couldn't upload my programs anywhere.
Conversly, when I took DiffEq, I convinced the professor to let me bring in my laptop and use mathematica on the test. I think I did rather well on that test...
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
But, naturally, I want it!
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Graphing Calculators...
/nutt
*Grin*
Without them I would've never passed Freshman chemistry...Mmmm...
I've always awed at the ignorance amounst the teachers who allow students to use Graphing Calculators where only simple computations are needed. They are an obvious threat, cheating wise.
And now they're giving us a networkable OS to take to our tests? They think we're responsible enough to resist? *lol*.
I beleive that this is whats holding back the use of laptops in schools too. Its a pitty.
</ramble>
serial ports? usb? (ETHERNET??!!??)? IDE? SCSI?
I for one like the look of this new super-calculator apart from one thing: the 256 Shades of grey. I have found that the most useful functions of graphic calculators are for graphing functions. Now if you put more than one function on the same graphm, you need some way of distinguishing these. Drawing them in different shades may be enough, but for me the best way would to do it in colour.
256 colours are far better than 256 greys, simply because they are easier to distinguish. This is what graphing calculators have needed for a long time, and there still aren't enough of them to do it.
And am I the only one who thinks the MP3 paying is a bit over the top? If I wanted an MP3 player I'd buy a Rio. A Calculator is for mathematics. Try to move to an all-purpose device and all to often you get something which doesn't perform any of its tasks particularly well...
--
Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last... This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
Just a blurb I saw, but cool that HP is getting it.. "now you'll have the power to teach math, not calculator usage." Ask most business calc students how to integrate and the response is often "Press the long s key."
If it runs Linux, does it mean that Octave, Yorick, Gnuplot or MuPad is possible for this thing?
Geeky Calculus Teacher
It won't ban it from the AP tests. The HP 48 line has a PC Speaker and it's allowed on the tests. I've managed to get the HP 48 to play everything from Frosty to the Ukraining Bell Carol. You just have to turn the speaker off in the tests.
- The device will almost definitely run WinCE as its OS. I have no idea why, and there's no reason from the company (or for the company to do so, aside from mad development cizash from Microsoft). Don't get your hopes up, though. I have a WinCE device (that I got for free, heh-heh) and it's not THAT bad. Just expensive.
- Everything has a "futuristic look" these days. Palm V, i-Opener, iMac, et cetera. This is HP's answer to TI's translucent color slide cases. Knee-jerk reaction.
Hope these both prove helpful. Though there's the possibility that it will run Pocket Linux in ADDITION to WinCE, it looks like WinCE is around to stay. *sob*-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
I'll give you a run-down of my HP49 problems:
Unit #1 -- DOA. Exchanged at store for "working" calculator.
Unit #2 -- Paint began wearing off rubber keys. Sent to HP for exchange.
Unit #3 -- HP sent this calculator with a huge chunk chopped off of the corner of one of the keys. Sent again to HP for exchange.
Unit #4 -- Right out of box, calcuator had indelible grime all over the plastic and keyboard. Returned to HP AGAIN.
The last unit HP sent is having paint wear issues, but I've given up in frustration and consider the $180 I spent to be tuition in a "HP Sucks" cirriculum.
listen, this sounds to me like a typical media ploy. HP is simply trying to develop interest in such a product. if you go to the HP website, there's a form that asks for information to be sent to you. Methinks that HP will actually only release such a product if they can generate enough enthusiam for it (considering that the cost will be pretty huge for a calculator). Count me out on this one folks.
Ummmm... obviously you're not using your 89 enough! I rarely get it to last more than my Pilot...
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition