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Celebrating the HP-35 Calculator With a New Model

An anonymous reader writes "Hewlett-Packard last week announced a contest whereby HP-35 fans create and submit videos of their favorite calculator memories. HP will choose the best videos and you can win a 50-inch, high-def plasma TV. But everyone wins, because HP this summer will debut a special new calculator model. The details aren't announced, however, it's likely to be a 35th anniversary edition of some sort."

7 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Let's see an updated 48GX by 644bd346996 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Get a 50g. The only downside compared to the 48 series is the lack of a large enter key. Otherwise, they have everything you have dreamed of: 75Mhz ARM9 processor, 2.5MB flash, SD slot, IR, USB, and serial comm, a CAS that is almost as good as a desktop app, and they can draw power from your computer via the USB cable. C compiler provided separately.

  2. Re:As easy as 1 ENTER 1 + by flyingfsck · · Score: 5, Informative

    BTW, that should be "1 Enter Enter +".

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  3. 41cx! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The HP41cx was THE best calculator ever made by humans.

    Nothing before, nor after, touched it, IMHO.

    Anybody else remember the PPC ROM?

  4. Re:"35th anniversary edition" by 644bd346996 · · Score: 5, Informative

    They have introduced several new models since closing the ACO. They have a pretty small staff right now, but they are producing. Manufacturing is handled by Kinpo, and R&D is handled by Cyrille de Brebisson. Bernard Parisse, author of the 49 series CAS, is no longer an employee but he is still developing new software, such as a recent geometry app for the 49/50 series. And many of the other former ACO employees are still active on comp.sys.hp48.

  5. Re:TI by bm_luethke · · Score: 2, Informative

    You will almost never convince someone who has not used an HP in a job what you wrote - TI's worked fine in school so they should everywhere else.

    My father is a land surveyor, he and the engineers he works with have lamented for ages about the lack of good calculators. They treasure their hp48's and 41's like a child. Most have several stockpiled. Many also grew up using TI's, but once they found the "older" HP's none ever looked back. I prefer my old 48 over my 49, but I sacrificed it to my father's business since I mostly use it for calculating stats in video games now (while I use plenty of math, as a software engineer it tends more towards stuff that isn't calculator based and the 49 does just as good there).

    TI's break from field usage, the keys wear out fast, and the software available is almost 100% geared towards high school and universities - not the real world. Sadly the newer HP's do also - although I understand that they are trying to make good calculators again. A person who has spent time with an HP will run rings around someone with a TI on almost any calculations - in the real world you do what is fastest/best even if it needs a learning curve, not that that which is easiest. Especially true in the engineering world. Over a 30 year career that makes WAY WAY more money, "long term" in a university setting is a semester.

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  6. Re:RPN by ari_j · · Score: 2, Informative

    You should have picked a language with strict word order rules. Latin is one of the most flexible languages out there in terms of word order. However, the more common word orderings from Latin seem to have become rules in some of the Romance languages. For instance, 'te amo' in most of them where there are probably 12 ways to order the words for the same sentence in Latin. ;)

  7. Re:As easy as 1 ENTER 1 + by zippthorne · · Score: 2, Informative

    48 and 49 *show* four element stacks (well the 49 will show fewer if you turn on algebraic mode, but only because formatted equations take up space). But the stack is limited only by available memory (or some very large number) afaik. I have no experience with any more recent HP calculators, and haven't used either of those series in a long time either, having largely abandoned graphing calculators: they're not nearly as useful as you'd think, at least for math. A simple scientific calculator is often more useful, and doesn't give you the potential crutch of a computer algebra system.

    Further, their functionality surely must by now have been surpassed by PDAs.

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