HP Calculator Department Closing

Beans writes "Today is a sad day for the engineering calculator world. HP calculator department is closing. www.calc.org has the scoop. Leaving employees just announced it on comp.sys.hp48. You can check google groups for the original posts."

Comments

Marketing part of the problem

[torako]

Having used my HP49 for quite some time now I have to say that it really is a great piece of engineering.
It is true that the main usage field for HP calculators is engineering and science, but in my opinion HP should have tried to sell more calculators to high school students and schools, because if someone is used to use TIs he is unlikely to switch to HP unless forced (after all, 170$ for an HP49g is not exactly cheap).
It's a pity to see the HP calcs go. Let's hope the HP calculator community keeps being vital.

Re:Marketing part of the problem

[richardmilhousnixon]

The HP49g is NOT a great piece of engineering. I've used a 48g for the past 5 years. When I heard of the new 49g I was one of the first to drop $200 to buy one. After only a week a was back to using my old 48g because I realized the 49 is just a colorful TI with an RPN OPTION! Did you notice that RPN is not the default mode, and the buttons are squishy, and the pixels on the screen are BROWN? HP's problem is that they didn't have faith in their (vastly superior) product. They noticed more people were buying TI so they tried to build a TI clone. But people don't want to pay $170 for a TI!

As for me -- I'm going to go out and buy a 48gx as quickly as possible.

Re:Marketing part of the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm at a college where programmable calcs are not allowed in exams either. It's very frustrating because all the concepts and theory you've learned are slowed down by the silly number crunching that needs to be done. You waste more time on the test punching in digits than anything.

I tried to explain this to them and citing other colleges/universities that DO allow them as examples. "See, the students coming out of X university are allowed to use them and they're in the top 10% of engineers in the country! WTF!?"

Of course, I'm a nobody, so even valid arguments fall on deaf ears. It's tough to fight the system.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Wire Tap]

I was the person who made the snide post to which you responded; and I would like to defend my stance.

I am extremely satisfied with my TI-89. Note, however, that I have not used, extensively, an HP calculator. I've heard great things about them, but you know what: MY 89 IS FINE. It gets the job done, and quite well, if you ask me. I've never had a problem with it (aside from the "feet" falling off), and I am impressed by the enormous number of functions that come built into the OS.

I really should not have said what I said above, as I am sure HP calculators are great, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the TI line. My friends use them, and I use them. They work wonders for us.

Blame Educational Institutions.

[crlf]

I've been using HP calculators since I was in grade 5. I remember the first day I received my trusty old 32SII. It was awkward at first, but RPN grew on me very fast. I continued to use this calculater, learning every function for it that I could. I used to laugh at my classmates for not even being able to add 1 + 2 on my calculater. It allowed me to be both pretentious and productive at the same time. It gave me a new unconventional way to look at the problems at hand.

Come university, I went out and splurged for my 48GX. Although I have yet to take the time to learn all of this beast-of-a-calculater's functionality, I know that if I did I would be even more productive. HP calculators are truly ingenious tools.

One thing I must say though is that I don't think it's fair that some educational institutions *make* students buy other more conventional calculaters. Specially in the fields and engineering and computer science. Students miss out by using the old-fashioned calculator, eg: the TI-8[69?]. Students learn and become dependent on their calculaters as they don't ever learn different ways of attacking the given problem. Blame the schools for not letting their students use a real calculater.

Good idea, but there are two problems

[ColGraff]

1.) Standardized testing and exams. For both of these in college, a lot of the time you will be required to use a standard graphics calculator. When that happens, having a high-end TI or HP calc is very nice.

2.)Speed. Maybe it's just me, but I find I can enter numbers a lot faster on my TI-83+ than I can on my Revo Plus, which has a keyboard, stylus, and a variety of graphics calculator apps which really blow the 83+ out of the water.

Re:I wonder if a palm would be a good replacement

[jaoswald]

The Palm has serious limitations on screen size that prevent getting a useful number of keys on the touch screen, in addition to having a touch screen instead of the fine feel of the HP 11C/28C/32SII keys. (I haven't touched one of the newer 48/49 series, so I can't respond to someone claiming the 49G had squishy keys.)

I thought about trying to emulate the 11C/12C on the Palm, but the 11 keyboard is too large to fit on the screen, without even thinking about the fact that the keys each have three functions on them.

The holistic experience of using one of these fine calculators is just not easy to achieve on a Palm.

I don't care about graphing or solving equations or matrices or playing Quake on my calculator, I just want something with all the mathematical functions I need, plus RPN, that doesn't make me curse. The mid-range HPs are great for me.

between sharp, TI, and casio

[ColGraff]

I think we can all agree it's no contest - neither sharp nor casio calcs are near as programmable or hackable as TIs - even if you think that TI calc are edsels compared to HPs, everything else is pretty much a horse-drawn carriage compared to TI.

TI

[Deanasc]

Cause the TI-89 kicks all a s s. No seriously, this is probably HP's response to a market place that is dominated by Texas Instruments. For calculus class we're told to buy a "graphing caluclator". No brand names. Everyone comes in the next day with some TI-8X. No one ever buys a Casio or HP.

But I will miss Reverse Polish Notation. It's funny to see the look on peoples faces when you loan them an HP cause they forgot their calculator and there's a test in 5 minutes.

RPN more intuitive

[jaoswald]

The advantage of RPN is more than just the raw number of keystrokes.

When I'm solving a real-world problem, usually I have the numbers (or you look them up when you need them), then I need to put them together semi-interactively. You look at the number on the screen, decide what the next step is, then do it.

RPN let's you type the number in, then decide what to do with it as you go. Algebraic/TI notation is only really useful when you've got a long formula on the page, and you want to read it left-to-right, parentheses and all, and just hit = at the end.
That happens a lot when you are a student who is just grinding through textbook problems, but hardly ever happens when you are thinking on your feet.

The levels of precendence used in the algebraic system are based on rules that make it easy to read equations on paper. There is no intrinsic reason why multiplication is higher precendence than addition, it just happens in practice to be most legible to write equations that way. When you're dealing with numbers, trying to get other numbers, the RPN stack let's you do things with the precendence that works best for thinking through the problem. APL has even a screwier behavior than RPN, but people who use it (I don't) swear it makes solving problems easier.

HP10C

[Robert Frazier]

I still use my HP10c on a near daily basis. It is from the mid '70s. If it dies before me, I'll get another HP calculator. However, it seems that it is one of these "buy once in a life-time" type things. Great for the consumer, but not so good for the producer. HP hadn't yet heard of engineered d obsolescence then, I guess.

Best wishes,
Bob

Hear hear, snap-on keyboard..

[xtal]

One of the things I wanted to do when my HP48G dies (which might be never) or when I find a broken HP calculator is to figure out how to build a snap on, or maybe a wireless linked, keyboard to the Palm platform. I know it's possible, it just might need a little PIC chip doing the translations. That calculator was always with me through my EE degree, and we used to joke that the engineering jackets used to have oversized inside pockets to store them perfectly.

A palm with the HP keys would be the ultimate. The tactile feedback on the 48GX is incredible and allowed me to "know" I did a calculation right, whereas the other ones and later models TI lacked that positive "thunk" feel.

Anyone wanna send me a busted HP? :)

Re:I wonder if a palm would be a good replacement

[omnirealm]

College math professors used to shrug at the prospect of students bringing calculators into exams. They have an attitude of, "If you don't know the material, your calculator won't help you on my exams."

I showed one of my professors the Computer Algebra System on my HP49g earlier this semester. Not only did it symbolically solve an integral that would have otherwise required a mastery of integration by parts to solve on paper, but it also showed all the intermediate steps that could be copied down on paper. It caused him a small paradigm shift.

In a day and age where handheld PC's can have wireless network cards, one has to wonder how accepting university professors are going to be of these new technologies. All you need is a page scanner to feed the book through and a PDF reader in the handheld, and a student could potentially have access to the entire text for the class while taking the test with his "calculator."

Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

From an 'old hp' lover...

This is indeed sad news, by itself, sad news for those being given a week's notice (Jean-Yves & the rest: it just happened to me as well, so I know how that feels!) and sad news for Engineering with a big E. [beat that: ML coding in nibbles in the 90-ties, 1700 bytes tetris! etc...]

As most pro-engineering designs, hp calculators had their cons that almost prohibited mass adoption: I mean, hp *could* have supported *both* RPN and 'natural' entry. Could have made the [graphic] displays' speeds match the CPUs inside. Could have made the darned things look both professional, serious AND sexy. But no, they had their style, and did stick to it. That's probably this mix we techies both hated (at first) and admired (soon after). I'd rather see the calc division slowly fade unaltered into history than turn into TI/Casio junk.

Now, just notice how many of the posts above, including mine, relate some glorious personal history with hp calcs from 10 or 20 years ago. See a 'problem'...? Yes, all of those calcs still work fine (including my own 48S)! Buttons & everything else work as on day1. Compare that to my PalmV (2 buttons fcuked, cover gum torn, touch-screen responsiveness(?) gets worse and worse). Old HP hardware was built to last. Who of you bought more than 1 HP calculator within a 10-15yr period?

Witness the change in printers or the Jornadas for that matter... 'great lasting quality' & 'consumer products' just don't go together anymore, at least not when technology changes the way it does now. Fiorina's arrival was bound to transform HP from a (slightly-sexier-than) DEC into DELL (sidenote: isn't it weird to see how remaining DEC bits will integrate into HP now they went through the Compaq counter-culture, eh?)

It does indeed look like a page has been turned, and the arrival of the PDAs pushes the calc business to the sidelines. Price & volume economy... And it's not a surprise for anybody: a simple search for 'rpn' on palmgear on turns out 43 entries, those did not appear yesterday! So take the ride & dl that HP12C (or whatever) 'emulator' to add to your gameboy, macII, atari and commodore64 .prc collection :-)

Hopefully, we will preserve the spirit. But I'll ALWAYS MISS the BUTTONS.

Advanced Calculators in high school?

[Tephyrnex]

Pardon me, but at what point did high school math or physics get complicated enough to need an advanced calculator. I used my HP28S & 48Gx extensively while getting my degree in electrical engineering; however, the most I ever used calculators in high school was for the Trig. (it's a little painstaking to calculate the cos(x) manually all the time.) At some point the methods of problem solving become more the issue than the actual execution of mathematical tedium. However, learning to do the tedium is part of any good education. Are high schools actually promoting the use of technology over actual learning?

HP and it's destruction of the world of computing

[Anonymous Coward]

From the company that bought you:

- HP/UX, the only commercial Unix which manages to be worse than Windows...
- ...so they can sell lots of Windows boxes
- Merged PA-RISC into IA-64
- Trying to buy out Compaq...
- ...and destroyed Alpha chips in the process

HP is unbridled evil.