Re:The early history of HP calculators
by jhbadger on Sunday September 10, 2017 @10:59AM
(#15212460)
Basically after the merger with Compaq in 2001, HP lost interest in their calculators. They still technically sell them, but they aren't advertised to any degree. Obviously since the advent of the smartphone the need for dedicated calculators is lessened, but as you say, the haptic feedback is nice and TI seems to be still selling a lot of calculators.
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They were dying long before smartphones. Cheap Casio calculators happened. I have a little $15 Casio scientific calculator and it has been all that I've needed for college and professional work. But it can take integrals, derivatives and has a general newtonian solver. It covers everything except matrices. Those are miserable to do on any calculator so I'm not missing much.
In all my life I've only ever seen two HP RPN calculators. One belonged to my high-school chem teacher, the other to a real estate agent. If there were a $30 RPN calculator with similar functions, I would use it.
Edit: 18 years later and they still make it, https://www.casio.com/products/calculators/fraction-and-scie...
Edit2: Looks like the most readily available RPN calculators are the HP 35S ($55) and HP 12C ($50).
Re:The early history of HP calculators
by tragomaskhalos on Sunday September 10, 2017 @03:01PM
(#15213712)
Yup - among us maths geeks at school in the 80s the HPs - especially the 41 - were the Rolls Royce of calculators, beautiful machines that few could afford, although even the high end programmable Casio that I settled for was pretty pricey.