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HP Launches New Calculators
lar1 writes "It looks like HP is back in the calculator buisness! In a press release dated 2003 October 20, HP states: 'Within the next several weeks, HP will be launching three additional new calculators: two graphing and one scientific. The two yet-to-be-launched graphing calculators, together with the hp 49g+ and the entry-level hp 9g, will provide a complete range of graphing calculators expected to fulfill the needs and budgets of a broad spectrum of calculator users.' The 49g+ boasts features such as: USB and IrDA connectivity, a 75MHz ARM CPU, 2MB of flash, and an SD card slot. That's a lot of calculator!" We mentioned this calculator-on-growth-hormones earlier.
You're right that the processor muscle is better on a PDA - but what a good calculator does is provide you with a great interface to do math. Having all the buttons right in front of you really does matter. Once you learn where the buttons are you can fly through calculations. Hunting through menus on a PDA or pecking a fake keyboard with a mouse on a screen isn't nearly as nice.
HP's 15C, 42S, and 48G are great. The neat thing about this new one is that you could probably power a sophisticated robot. You could even do the inverse kinematics on the fly.
The interface is what makes the difference. I have an HP48GX as well as a Palm Tungsten E. Someone has written a 48SX/48GX/49G emulator that will on the palm. I have it, and it works great. There's nothing like being able to carry the functionality of my calculator with me wherever I go.
That being said, it is not a part and parcel replacement for my calculator. For intense operations the keypad on the real calculator is worlds better than clicking on the screen. The other thing is that the screen size of my calculator is just a little bit smaller than the screen of my palm, and on the palm screen you have to fit both the keypad and the calculator display.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
wouldn't HP be better off writing PDA software to do all of these functions?
One problem with convergence of the general-purpose PDA and the calculator is that colleges ban the former from final exams because they can be used to store volumes of notes, even entire textbooks. There really is a market for college students, especially in engineering and sciences, for a good calculator without too much memory and fancy graphics, simply to help perform accurate calculations and nothing more.
Anybody want a peanut?
I'd tend to disagree with you, even in the field of complex math teaching.
There is no denying that the CAS of these calculators is very powerful, and often can't be challenged for solving equations or calculating triple integrals. But at best, these kinds of tools can help you working faster and more efficiently, but not do the work for you.
In physics, the calculator (or Maple, Mathematica, Matlab..) can solve your equations saving your time - and some of your nights - but cannot put into equations your problem which is the real deal.
In mathematics, the calculator might be capable of determining the kernels and images of linear applications as an example, but comes short for solving anything that requires to find a proper demonstration. So it won't get you very far.
At last, it could be argued that because of the huge amount of memory modern calculators feature, student are becoming lazy and shove all the formulas into their calcs instead of learning them. Yes, it might be a shame. However, it is sometimes said that the important is not to know all the information by heart, but to know where you will be able to find it.