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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.
Lisp is dirty?
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
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
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
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.
Is this the name for the next generation PDA's, this "calculator"?
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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 $180 to beta test their product.
Let me guess - the futuristic look is a big red and white plastic box, kind of like an ice chest.
Oh, wait - that is an ice chest. For overclockers to carry it around in.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So as though the NYT weren't enough, Thomas Friedman has a /. account now! But the Polish working class want their pensions and health care system back! youse dirty capitalist &^%$#.
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.
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
Aw yeah. That'll be one sweet calculator. If I combine this and my fashionable pocket protectors, I'll be the perfect chick repellant.
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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
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...
Alex Bischoff
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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
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 ;)
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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
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!
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
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.
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.
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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
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
... 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!
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?
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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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
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.
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)
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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 already carry around a TI-89 calc, and a palm. Am I going to need to get one of those photographers vests?
Pax Digitalia
128 shades of gray is insignificant if it can still run under heavy use for 6 months on just one set of batteries.
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...
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Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last... This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
- 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/