New High-End HP Calculator?

mschaef writes "There's a pretty convincing looking story over on hpcalc.org describing a new high-end HP calculator. The bottom line: 75MHz ARM9, USB Port, IrDA compatibility, 128x80 display, and a slot for SD cards. It also looks like the same basic software is running, either ported or via emulation of the venerable Saturn (HP-propriatary) CPU. The full story is over at HPcalc.org. It's good to see HP back in the game (hopefully) like this."

Cheating in Exams?

[captainclever]

Hmm... I doubt it'll be allowed in exams or tests if it's got infra-red capabilities.

People might find it all to easy to chat and exchange answers on the sly if their calculators can communicate silently.

but

[SUPAMODEL]

...but can you run linux on it?
Seriously tho, that's a serious piece of hardware.
Every geek should have one.
I had to use a TI-83 as part of my schooling, and the fun we used to have with that - playing networked 2-player frogger games and shit via link cables we spanned across desks so you couldn't see.
It was pretty good for learning maths stuff, too. We had to go thru all the finding stuff out thru calculus methods etc before plotting them up on the machine, but it was good to show comparisons of families of curves without having to arse about drawing up countless graphs.
Pity IrDA sucks for data transfer when you are doing furious gaming sessions.
I finish my undergrad course this year, and that's certainly got my interested. I had messed about with various maths programs and the like on palm & pocketpc devices, but nothing replaces the way a graphing calculator type of thing works because it's designed for such a specific task, and they do them well.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[dbowden]

I don't know. I never had trouble getting my HP28s [hpmuseum.org]into exams.

Of course, it's IR port was output only, and strictly for printing.

Re:Is there a market still?

[Prince_Ali]

Yes, well you may like to use a PDA as a calculator, but most people would want more than 6 buttons to work with. A number pad would be nice for a calculator... and buttons for add, subtract... and another 30 or so for different functions. I don't think a stylus would be the best calculator interface.

Why not use a PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why not use a PDA with better screen and resolution, faster processor (300Mhz, or more), more applications. The remaining factor is that is there a graphics calculator application that is as powerful as an HP cal (or more powerful).

The price, well, I think you can get a $200 PDA that is more powerful than 75Mhz.

After all, the HP cal may have the processor optimized for heavy engineering task (and other heavy math task). Also, it has buttons just for calculator. So this may be the deciding factor.

What do you think?

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[mirko]

While I was a teacher, I also happened to guard exams.
I can assure you that I met very few people (nobody would not be a big lie) who'd recognize a communicant calculator.
Also, in France, calculators are allowed only if their sizes are within allowed specifications so, you can happily go there with such a (geeky) "toy"...

BTW, when I was a student, I once met a guard who'd consider my Casio FX4000P as the data storage (550 signs, enough for most formulae in sms-style) it was.
He took it with a pen and pushed the data-reset button, on its back.
What he didn't know is that I actually disconnected it before, so we both had a reason to be satisfied, this day ;)

Re:Yes... but does it run Linux?

[lxs]

If it accepts rpn input, I can live without linux (on a calculator).

Re:Is there a market still?

[Trurl's Machine]

With PDAs becoming faster and more capable, is there still a market for plane calculators? Palm (and others) must have tons of (free) software to do the same with your PDA.

With mobile phones becoming more capable and subnotebooks becoming lighter and smaller, is there still a market for PDA's?

Semi process?

[TonyJohn]

The story lists the processor as:

Processor: ARM9, 75 MHz (32 bits, probably 0.13 or 0.18 micron process, est. 20-70 mW)

0.13 sounds like overkill for an ARM9 at 75MHz - given that they can do over 200MHz in that kind of a process. I expect the manufacturer would have used a larger, cheaper process like 0.35 or 0.25.

Re:Why not use a PDA?

[jrockway]

Sure you have, there was even an article on slashdot about it :)

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/04/12/179214.sht ml ?tid=159&tid=100
http://power48.mobilevoodoo.com/

I personally prefer my TI89 with RPN hacks added. That or

M-x calc :)

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[mblase]

HP calculators have had infrared beaming for at least twelve years; my 48SX was top-of-the-line when I was a sophomore in high school, and supported the beaming of programs, equations (I guess, we never used it that way) and other goodies. Like the Palm handhelds, though, the range is too limited to be used for cheating. You have to have both units a few inches away from each other, too far unless you're communicating with someone on the same table as you--in which case you're better off just writing it down on paper.

I miss my HP, I really do. RPN took some getting used to, but I put that thing through its paces for almost four years--trigonometry, calculus and pre-calc, four years of Math Team (don't laugh, it's no geekier than Slashdot) and an AP exam. Once I got to college, though, the math classes got more proof-oriented and less numbers-oriented. If I'd been an engineering student, I'm sure it would have been invaluable, but as a mathematics major it got relegated further and further back in my desk drawer. Nowadays I can't even remember how to use most of the power functions, let alone graph a polar parametric equation or plot a vector field.

To be fair, TI calculators can do almost everything those HPs could, and for a lower price. If HP can still make a top-of-the-line today, though, I say more power to them.

Re:Reliability?

[MyRuger]

The HP48 is one of the most reliable calculators ever made. I have literally seen one run over by a truck and still work.

Then HP made the 49, which I quickly tossed aside without a care where it landed, because I knew I would never use it again.

Hopefully this new 49 is as cool and durable as the 48 was.

I am ELATED!!!

[alchemist68]

Gosh, THIS is good news. I was absolutely DEVASTATED when HP stopped making (the HP48) calculators. I've never owned an HP49, but heard they were close to the HP48. Wow, this is exciting, of course, only a geek/nerd would be. I can't wait to get my hands on one. USB, cool, it should work with Mac OS X. I just hope it runs all my old code. And I thought I was doomed to using Texas Instruments calculators for the rest of my life or persuing eBay for HP leftovers. Anyone not in the know must know that HP made THE BEST calculators EVER for reliability, functionality, ACCURACY, and features. These things were designed to last a lifetime of a professional.

For those interested in running an HP48 on their Macintosh (Mac OS X and 9), here's a good HP48 emulator:

http://www.markus-fritze.de/x48/
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/math_science /x48.html

All YOUR CALCULATOR ARE BELONG TO HEWLETT PACKARD!

Re:Time to upgrade?

[espo812]

then to the much nicer 85, and finally to the 89 when I hit calc.

I got an 85 in middle school and I hated it. This might be because I didn't take the time to learn it very well, and none of the teachers/students had one. But it was just much different from the other TI-8x models. Maybe it was just me. Anyway my 89 I do love very much (and read the whole manual for, and the teacher supported). Unfortunately, I've had two classes now where the teacher said you could "cheat" with an 89, so they wern't allowed.

Work smarter, not harder I say.

48GX... Still the standard

[Andy Dodd]

I work at an engineering firm. (They build transmitters for cell towers)

The only calculators I've ever seen in use here are 48Gs and 48GXes. It's either that or Matlab on a lab PC, not many other options for serious engineers. No one has a TI or Casio here - those are calculators for middle school students.

I'm worried that this new 49GX will not be as sturdy as the old 48GX, given HP's recent build quality track record (Seems like all the people who gave a damn about quality went over to Agilent, who still make some nice gear). Plus, the picture shown of this potential new 49G+ looks way too TI-ish.

HP 49 series fixed?

[Paddyish]

I've used an HP 49G ever since it came out. It's impressive in it's strengths, and nearly as impressive in it's weaknesses.

I have found in several situations that the CAS, while a bit slower, can come up with a correct answer to a complicated transform that causes a TI89 to barf and quit. It can effectively calculate factorials up to about 250!, which I think is very neat (if not all that useful). The equation writer is incredible - it's like entering equations in Mathcad, easy to see what they ~really~ look like, and quick too. Clock, calendar and on-board help menus are very useful as well. RPN always adds mucho score points. Too bad it defaults to algebraic out of the box...

My biggest complaint is in the ROM - only the latest (non-HP approved) ROM revision fixes the more serious bugs, like random garbage collection delays, in the calc's OS. There's also the standard complaint about the sucky rubber keys, and the annoying screen design & resolution. Speed isn't too bad - the general code is optimised well (much of it was taken from the 48 series).

This new addition appears to fix all, or nearly all of the mistakes that were made with the 49G. I look forward to reading reviews of use.

Maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, but it looks as though I may add a new RPN machine to my collection soon.

Yes, but does it use RPN ?

[tmark]

I could care less about almost all of the speces except one: does it use Reverse Polish Notation ? I couldn't find the answer in the article. There's a reason that the HP12C is still one of the - if not THE - dominant calculator in the world of finance (indeed, AIMR requires CFA candidates to use it or a single type of TI calculator on their exams), and that reason is RPN. (I know it's not because of speed because it is up to 10 times slower than the TI calculator which costs a fraction of an HP 12C).

Re:Is there a market still?

[JanneM]

It's really a matter of perspective.

We have PDA:s that can also make cellular phone calls. We have phones that can double up as PDA:s. They seem to aim for exactly the same market, but, of course, they don't, since they're best features are aimed at different uses.

Same thing with calculators. I'd love to have a HP calculator that will also function reasonably as a PDA. I'm a lot less interested in a PDA that can also do some calculator functions.

It's all about where the focus is. Take the keyboard as an example: a dinky on-screen keyboard, or aphanumeric keyboard just isn't nearly as functional and convenient as a 'real' calculator keyboard a'la my deeply missed HP15, where all the functionality is right there, at your fingertips. Likewise, a phonepad isn't really that good for PDA functionality, and a touch screen isn't really that good for a phone.

Also, the software for PDA:s are of varying, and unknown, quality. One thing that really made the HP line of calculators stand out was their attention to various corner cases. When you got a result, you knew that was the correct one, to the practical limit of the hardware and encoding used. The Palm calculators I've tried have inevitably had various bugs and have missed special cases that made you get the wrong result from time to time - they would not handle over/underflow correctly in all cases, or use algorithms that would not give the stated precision over all of it's range, and so on.

My dream would be a new HP calculator with the format and design of the HP15c, but modernized (faster CPU with more memory; pisel screen, rather than segment, and so on). That one was a nearly perfect unit for me. After fifteen years, I had unfortunately dropped it, spilled coffee and soda in it, buried it under piles of books, stuffed it in dirty, dusty bags and submerged it too many times and it gave up :(

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[noah_fense]

A good friend of mine used his Palm to take the SAT IIs a few years ago. The test proctor didn't check ANYONE's calculator, let alone his Palm.

not like you really need a calculator on the SAT IIs.

In college, math courses allow you to use your calculator, but put integrals on the test that will choke up your TI-89 like nobody's business. Same thing in diff eq.

-n

Re:Why a PDA won't replace the calc...

[zsazsa]

Until sombody creates an equally good mathematics software suit for PDA's these things will still be around.
Another thing is QA. How are we to be sure that some program we downloaded to our PDA does the calculations correctly.

A few years ago HP started developing a WinCE-based calculator called Xpander [hpcalc.org]. The project was cancelled but if you have a PocketPC you can download the onboard software [saltire.com]. I don't have one, so I can't comment on how good it is.

Add on keyboard

[panurge]

Why not sell the software and an add on keyboard for PDAs? I agree the stylus makes them less than ideal calculators, but wouldn't a decent HP style add on keyboard with adequate size keys not only make a nicer calculator, but also add better numeric input to PDAs? Then you would have a calculator with decent display, lots of memory, usually Bluetooth (export graphs into Word and Excel?)

In fact, why not go the whole hog and have a data acquisition module as well? A pocket datalogger that collected the data, modelled the function, did the statistics, and output the data into a report on a PC. Leverage almost all of HPs technologies into a well integrated product.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[gnalle]

You needed a hp48 to be able to cheat. There were mods around which enabled them to communicate over a distance of 13 meters. In the danish technical they used to have a special box in which you could put your hp48 calculator. This box would effectively prevent IR communication.

Re:Does this mean I have to replace my 48GX?

[bgarcia]

That is still the ultimate "nerd" calculator.

Maybe for you youngins, but for my generation the ultimate nerd calculator is the HP-28S [hpmuseum.org].

And yes, if a calculator doesn't have RPN and a stack, I just don't like using it. :P

I'd be happy if they would just...

[Anonymous Coward]

start making the 16C again.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[BrokenHalo]

I guess I could have tried cheating in my early exams with my old HP48G+, though only one fellow-student at that level had one; most had TIs or Casios. But the machines are so slow (though I love them still) that it would only have slowed me down.

Sometimes there's no substitute for talent, or at least hard work. I got a pretty good grade anyway. For "real" maths, calculators are superfluous in any case.

I am a total dork

[ralphus]

I am having fond memories of my 48sx & gx from almost 12 years ago. Oh look, there it is right on the shelf next to me still in perfect condition w/ the extended manuals, cables etc.

Did anyone else wait eagerly for the new EduCalc catalog? Did anyone else actuall use the included metal plate that came with the GX and get it engraved and put on the back of the calculator? Was anyone else as absolutely dorky as me and name your HP48 and have that name engraved on the Calc?

This thing was loads of fun, it made calculus 10x more fun than it already was, it was the first thing I started hacking on, and I'm a bit sad that I don't have a job today that requires me to use the HP anymore.

yup, I'm a total dork. I just thought I'd share.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[mhayenga]

Not at my college... At UT (The University of Texas at Austin), I haven't had a single math test I *was* allowed to use a calculator on. EE and physics courses are different, but in math, it seems to be a major wrong here.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[BWJones]

Hmm... I doubt it'll be allowed in exams or tests if it's got infra-red capabilities.

People might find it all to easy to chat and exchange answers on the sly if their calculators can communicate silently.

While proctoring a physics exam, we used an IR camera to actually watch two guys cheating real-time with their HP48's. This was back in 1990 and the course directors were not pleased as they had no idea this was possible at that time.

75MHz

[pagercam2]

Everyone seems to be commenting on how relaible old HP calcs were. The real story is that a calcuclator even a graphing one requires a 32bit 75MHz processor. This blows my mind why does a calculator need a 75MHz processor. ARM9 is way overkill they should have, assuming that they really wanted to use an ARM stick with the ARM7 which is fine for basic computation it just misses the support for caches and longer pipelines. The ARM7 is smaller (smaller die lower cost), and lower power (longer battery life). Hardware design seems to be more about bragging rights that producing a good product. The SW guys all want to use C++ so they don't have to understand the processor, C++ is ussually 20-30% slower than C and 100-400% slower than assembly and assembly is what a calculator's code should be written in.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[Dylan Zimmerman]

The HP-49G is entirely without IR, as is the HP-40. Interestingly, the HP-40 and the HP-39 are exactly the same hardware with the exception of the IR port. The American teachers told HP that a CAS is cheating and the European teachers were against IR, so the HP-40 that was sold in Europe has a CAS but no IR and the 39 sold in America has IR, but no CAS. IIRC, the 39 can even be flashed as a 40 to give it the CAS. Oddly enough, the 39 is strictly algebraic, though I don't know about the 40.

The 49 doesn't have IR and one of the pins necesary for the IR to work is used for FLASH bank switching. It does, however, have an IR lens (that piece of dark, shiny plastic) that makes it appear to have IR capability. I really don't care about the IR.

I wonder how they made the screen 16 pixels taller. They probably just destroyed the pixel aspect ratio and made the pixels non-square. The square pixels is the entire reason that I like HP's calculator displays over TI's. With the HPs, I don't have to do any correction to draw round circles in ASM.

Re:Cheating in Exams?

[HardCase]

At Boise State University, there were no algebraic calculators allowed in most Calc and DiffEQ classes. They were allowed in engineering classes, however. The assumption was that, post Calculus, we were learning about engineering, not math. The problems were not designed to trip us up on the math, but, rather, on the engineering!

That being said, I have to say that I think that my 48GX is one of the best calculators ever made in terms of speed, size and ease of use. However, indefinite integrals are the devil on it! A TI92 makes them a piece of cake. Tests involving fields just couldn't be done with the 48GX because there wasn't enough time. I was lucky enough to be able to afford both the HP and the TI, so I could use whichever tool worked best.

As a practicing engineer, though, I only use the 48GX. I think I've used the TI92 to balance my checkbook when the HP was at work, but that's about it...and I only really do arithmetic on the HP anyway...computerized field solvers do all of the differential equations for me. Welcome to the real world!

-h-