You definitely have a point with the exam allowance.
However, the price is another issue: when you already have a handheld PC (I'm not even talking about PDAs), then your calculator comes for free, it is not an additional cost.
I don't think that college students need to run thousands of already written apps. I just say that given the choice, they will choose the platform that has the best potential. Don't tell me that if you could have played quake on a handheld PC while in preparatory classes, you would have bought a HP48. The thing is that at that time, you had no choice. Today, you have it.
Moreover, a lot of PC apps completely obsolete HP apps: do I need to mention mathematica?
And I disagree with you when you say that the 49 will be software compatible with the 48: all cool apps are written in asm or in external, and it is my understanding that the memory layout and entry points have changed between the 48 and the 49.
We will see. But IMHO, the 49 will be to the student world what "The Phantom Menace" is to the whole world: a good thing, not a revolutionary one.
As a former asm developer on HP48, I hate to say that, but: who will buy the HP49?
Although I haven't tested it, I'm sure it is of first quality (especially when I see that Jean Yves Avenard seems to lead the team that created it). However, I'm not convinced that such a great toy can compete will today's handheld PCs that run real OSes (did somebody say Linux?) and thousands of already written applications at light speed.
In short, and with all due respect to the developers that did a great job, it just comes 3 years late. I expected HP to come with a new revolutionnary pocket calculator a few years ago... Oh boy, what a waste:(
-- Regis "HPReg" Duchesne, Co-author of old P.C.T.
Slashdot Mirror
"the perfect solution would be a thin OS with no GUI that just allows you to install and run multiple OSes simultaneously."
What do you think VMware ESX Server is?
Last time I checked, VMware Workstation was $ 189.
Just get a freaking answering machine like everybody else does, and filter your incoming calls based on your caller's _voice_.
You definitely have a point with the exam allowance.
However, the price is another issue: when you already have a handheld PC (I'm not even talking about PDAs), then your calculator comes for free, it is not an additional cost.
I don't think that college students need to run thousands of already written apps. I just say that given the choice, they will choose the platform that has the best potential. Don't tell me that if you could have played quake on a handheld PC while in preparatory classes, you would have bought a HP48. The thing is that at that time, you had no choice. Today, you have it.
Moreover, a lot of PC apps completely obsolete HP apps: do I need to mention mathematica?
And I disagree with you when you say that the 49 will be software compatible with the 48: all cool apps are written in asm or in external, and it is my understanding that the memory layout and entry points have changed between the 48 and the 49.
We will see. But IMHO, the 49 will be to the student world what "The Phantom Menace" is to the whole world: a good thing, not a revolutionary one.
--
Regis "HPReg" Duchesne
As a former asm developer on HP48, I hate to say that, but: who will buy the HP49?
:(
Although I haven't tested it, I'm sure it is of first quality (especially when I see that Jean Yves Avenard seems to lead the team that created it). However, I'm not convinced that such a great toy can compete will today's handheld PCs that run real OSes (did somebody say Linux?) and thousands of already written applications at light speed.
In short, and with all due respect to the developers that did a great job, it just comes 3 years late. I expected HP to come with a new revolutionnary pocket calculator a few years ago... Oh boy, what a waste
--
Regis "HPReg" Duchesne,
Co-author of old P.C.T.