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.

Comments

And the thought on everyone's mind is....

[JoeLinux]

...Polish Notation Reverse it is?

Broken.

[grub]

Slashdot'd already. Here's the text:

HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced the hp 49g+ abacus, the flagship of a
new line of powerful abaci to be launched this fall.

Built for scientists, engineers, mathematicians, surveyors and
students who need portable calculating power, the HP 49g+ abacus
performs all the basic math functions the user knows.
Total workspace includes an unprecedented 80 rows of 10 beads per,
broken into two 40 row columns side by side.

Priced at suggested retail of $99.99, the
abacus also allows for future upgrades via an included
toolkit which allows the user to remove each side bar permitting
access to the bead assembly for easy replacement of worn beads.

"The hp 49g+ is a powerful tool for professional
engineers or college students who prefer the SB (Sliding Bead) entry mode of
calculating ," said Fred Valdez, general manager, abacuss, HP
Personal Systems Group. "We've taken the original hp 49g and made it
streamlined, faster and shellaced to prevent splinters."

my question

[spammyy]

who needs that much in a calculator? i mean sounds ok for an entry level pda, but do you need that much? maybe they're trying to capture the calculator gaming world (who's played hick quest on their Ti83)

Re:Who is it aimed at?

[daksis]

I too have fond memories of being jealous over the guy who had every physics formula ever programmed into his TI or HP super computer. But I'm a little curious, with hand held computers with 400mhz processors becoming the norm, will we soon see the death of the "Super Calculator"?

Clac vs PDA

[magarity]

Just to play devil's advocate: Since PDAs can be had with 75Mhz ARM CPUs and much more memory, what makes this dedicated device better? Given the magins in hardware manufacturing, wouldn't HP be better off writing PDA software to do all of these functions?

Re:Clac vs PDA

[jonniesmokes]

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.