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.

Comments

WHY?

[Vanders]

Why the hell would i want my Calculator to play MP3's? Geez, there's convergance, and then theres convergance.

mmm...tasty.

[heatdeath]

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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Reverse Polish Notation?

[abischof]

What I want to know is -- will this still use Reverse Polish Notation, like the rest of the HP Calc family? While I don't have anything against RPN in priciple, I never could quite get used to it... (then again, I've never actually owned an HP calc, this was just from trying friends' calcs)

Alex Bischoff
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Re:Reverse Polish Notation?

[styopa]

Frankly, I won't even consider buying it unless it uses RPN. Not only do I believe that it is faster than other methods out there but I love being able to say that my calculator does math like Yoda speaks.
<Yoda_Accent>One Two plus, hmm.</Yoda_Accent>

Re:Aren't any of you people Engineers

[Tassach]

I think you hit the nail right on the head. The problem with the Palm and it's ilk is that they are optimized for the needs of managers and salescritters, not engineers. While smaller than the general business market, I think that engineers make up a big enough market niche to make a specialized engineering PDA a profitable venture.

An engineering PDA would need to have a good expansion interface (PCMCIA, perhaps) so that you can add whatever data acquisition / capture device your particular flavor of engineering requires, the CPU power & programability to manipulate & analyze the data you've captured, a display to visualize it, and a fast interface to upload it all to a real computer.

"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

Calculators

[troc]

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

Re:Calculator to end all calculators?

[Fred Ferrigno]

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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Calculator to end all calculators?

[AstroJetson]

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.

Linux on an HP calculator

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Can you just imagine having to put your command line args in RPN?

MyCalc%> mv file1 file2
error: argument missing
MyCalc%> file1 file2 mv
MyCalc%> cat /etc/passwd | grep fascdot | cut -d: -f7
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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Shades of grey?

[aliastnb]

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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Straight from the horse's mouth

[BlueCalx-]

Hey folks! I work at ticalc.org (and I posted the news item in question), and I have a few more points to add to the fray of discussion here. Hope I'm not afflicted with Late Poster Syndrome(TM):

• 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*