New High-End HP Calculator?

mschaef writes "There's a pretty convincing looking story over on hpcalc.org describing a new high-end HP calculator. The bottom line: 75MHz ARM9, USB Port, IrDA compatibility, 128x80 display, and a slot for SD cards. It also looks like the same basic software is running, either ported or via emulation of the venerable Saturn (HP-propriatary) CPU. The full story is over at HPcalc.org. It's good to see HP back in the game (hopefully) like this."

Comments

Cheating in Exams?

[captainclever]

Hmm... I doubt it'll be allowed in exams or tests if it's got infra-red capabilities.

People might find it all to easy to chat and exchange answers on the sly if their calculators can communicate silently.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[mirko]

While I was a teacher, I also happened to guard exams.
I can assure you that I met very few people (nobody would not be a big lie) who'd recognize a communicant calculator.
Also, in France, calculators are allowed only if their sizes are within allowed specifications so, you can happily go there with such a (geeky) "toy"...

BTW, when I was a student, I once met a guard who'd consider my Casio FX4000P as the data storage (550 signs, enough for most formulae in sms-style) it was.
He took it with a pen and pushed the data-reset button, on its back.
What he didn't know is that I actually disconnected it before, so we both had a reason to be satisfied, this day ;)

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[mblase]

HP calculators have had infrared beaming for at least twelve years; my 48SX was top-of-the-line when I was a sophomore in high school, and supported the beaming of programs, equations (I guess, we never used it that way) and other goodies. Like the Palm handhelds, though, the range is too limited to be used for cheating. You have to have both units a few inches away from each other, too far unless you're communicating with someone on the same table as you--in which case you're better off just writing it down on paper.

I miss my HP, I really do. RPN took some getting used to, but I put that thing through its paces for almost four years--trigonometry, calculus and pre-calc, four years of Math Team (don't laugh, it's no geekier than Slashdot) and an AP exam. Once I got to college, though, the math classes got more proof-oriented and less numbers-oriented. If I'd been an engineering student, I'm sure it would have been invaluable, but as a mathematics major it got relegated further and further back in my desk drawer. Nowadays I can't even remember how to use most of the power functions, let alone graph a polar parametric equation or plot a vector field.

To be fair, TI calculators can do almost everything those HPs could, and for a lower price. If HP can still make a top-of-the-line today, though, I say more power to them.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[noah_fense]

A good friend of mine used his Palm to take the SAT IIs a few years ago. The test proctor didn't check ANYONE's calculator, let alone his Palm.

not like you really need a calculator on the SAT IIs.

In college, math courses allow you to use your calculator, but put integrals on the test that will choke up your TI-89 like nobody's business. Same thing in diff eq.

-n

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[mhayenga]

Not at my college... At UT (The University of Texas at Austin), I haven't had a single math test I *was* allowed to use a calculator on. EE and physics courses are different, but in math, it seems to be a major wrong here.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[BWJones]

Hmm... I doubt it'll be allowed in exams or tests if it's got infra-red capabilities.

People might find it all to easy to chat and exchange answers on the sly if their calculators can communicate silently.

While proctoring a physics exam, we used an IR camera to actually watch two guys cheating real-time with their HP48's. This was back in 1990 and the course directors were not pleased as they had no idea this was possible at that time.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[HardCase]

At Boise State University, there were no algebraic calculators allowed in most Calc and DiffEQ classes. They were allowed in engineering classes, however. The assumption was that, post Calculus, we were learning about engineering, not math. The problems were not designed to trip us up on the math, but, rather, on the engineering!

That being said, I have to say that I think that my 48GX is one of the best calculators ever made in terms of speed, size and ease of use. However, indefinite integrals are the devil on it! A TI92 makes them a piece of cake. Tests involving fields just couldn't be done with the 48GX because there wasn't enough time. I was lucky enough to be able to afford both the HP and the TI, so I could use whichever tool worked best.

As a practicing engineer, though, I only use the 48GX. I think I've used the TI92 to balance my checkbook when the HP was at work, but that's about it...and I only really do arithmetic on the HP anyway...computerized field solvers do all of the differential equations for me. Welcome to the real world!

-h-

Re:Is there a market still?

[Prince_Ali]

Yes, well you may like to use a PDA as a calculator, but most people would want more than 6 buttons to work with. A number pad would be nice for a calculator... and buttons for add, subtract... and another 30 or so for different functions. I don't think a stylus would be the best calculator interface.

Why not use a PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why not use a PDA with better screen and resolution, faster processor (300Mhz, or more), more applications. The remaining factor is that is there a graphics calculator application that is as powerful as an HP cal (or more powerful).

The price, well, I think you can get a $200 PDA that is more powerful than 75Mhz.

After all, the HP cal may have the processor optimized for heavy engineering task (and other heavy math task). Also, it has buttons just for calculator. So this may be the deciding factor.

What do you think?

Re:Reliability?

[MyRuger]

The HP48 is one of the most reliable calculators ever made. I have literally seen one run over by a truck and still work.

Then HP made the 49, which I quickly tossed aside without a care where it landed, because I knew I would never use it again.

Hopefully this new 49 is as cool and durable as the 48 was.

HP 49 series fixed?

[Paddyish]

I've used an HP 49G ever since it came out. It's impressive in it's strengths, and nearly as impressive in it's weaknesses.

I have found in several situations that the CAS, while a bit slower, can come up with a correct answer to a complicated transform that causes a TI89 to barf and quit. It can effectively calculate factorials up to about 250!, which I think is very neat (if not all that useful). The equation writer is incredible - it's like entering equations in Mathcad, easy to see what they ~really~ look like, and quick too. Clock, calendar and on-board help menus are very useful as well. RPN always adds mucho score points. Too bad it defaults to algebraic out of the box...

My biggest complaint is in the ROM - only the latest (non-HP approved) ROM revision fixes the more serious bugs, like random garbage collection delays, in the calc's OS. There's also the standard complaint about the sucky rubber keys, and the annoying screen design & resolution. Speed isn't too bad - the general code is optimised well (much of it was taken from the 48 series).

This new addition appears to fix all, or nearly all of the mistakes that were made with the 49G. I look forward to reading reviews of use.

Maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, but it looks as though I may add a new RPN machine to my collection soon.

Yes, but does it use RPN ?

[tmark]

I could care less about almost all of the speces except one: does it use Reverse Polish Notation ? I couldn't find the answer in the article. There's a reason that the HP12C is still one of the - if not THE - dominant calculator in the world of finance (indeed, AIMR requires CFA candidates to use it or a single type of TI calculator on their exams), and that reason is RPN. (I know it's not because of speed because it is up to 10 times slower than the TI calculator which costs a fraction of an HP 12C).

Re:Is there a market still?

[JanneM]

It's really a matter of perspective.

We have PDA:s that can also make cellular phone calls. We have phones that can double up as PDA:s. They seem to aim for exactly the same market, but, of course, they don't, since they're best features are aimed at different uses.

Same thing with calculators. I'd love to have a HP calculator that will also function reasonably as a PDA. I'm a lot less interested in a PDA that can also do some calculator functions.

It's all about where the focus is. Take the keyboard as an example: a dinky on-screen keyboard, or aphanumeric keyboard just isn't nearly as functional and convenient as a 'real' calculator keyboard a'la my deeply missed HP15, where all the functionality is right there, at your fingertips. Likewise, a phonepad isn't really that good for PDA functionality, and a touch screen isn't really that good for a phone.

Also, the software for PDA:s are of varying, and unknown, quality. One thing that really made the HP line of calculators stand out was their attention to various corner cases. When you got a result, you knew that was the correct one, to the practical limit of the hardware and encoding used. The Palm calculators I've tried have inevitably had various bugs and have missed special cases that made you get the wrong result from time to time - they would not handle over/underflow correctly in all cases, or use algorithms that would not give the stated precision over all of it's range, and so on.

My dream would be a new HP calculator with the format and design of the HP15c, but modernized (faster CPU with more memory; pisel screen, rather than segment, and so on). That one was a nearly perfect unit for me. After fifteen years, I had unfortunately dropped it, spilled coffee and soda in it, buried it under piles of books, stuffed it in dirty, dusty bags and submerged it too many times and it gave up :(