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: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?

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.

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 :(