New HP 50 G ?
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From: John H Meyers on 2 Jun 2006 05:27 Mobile phones are hotter and newer -- "the rage"; what's equally improved in clothes over the same period, say, or in the vegetables served at the table, or in classic works of music or art, and hey, have internet churches replaced those ancient, archaic brick and mortar, medieval wooden bench places yet? Does anyone know where to get a toothbrush that really does what it's supposed to, rather than primarily aiming to *look* like something out of a sci-fi film, more to simply attract otherwise unfulfilled kids and thus add to profit margin? I think that a skilled artistic designer could make the HP49/50 look far more inherently attractive -- no, not like a chevron, but by adding *elegance* and *beauty* to it, as a fine faceplate and keyboard might really do (plus actually working and lasting a while, of course); curiously, Vance Packard once observed that "higher class" products could often be packaged inherently more cheaply than products aimed at people who need marketing more than function. It would be fine, of course, to develop ever more fun personal tech stuff; it's just that other things are a bit more urgently needed for fulfilling lives and living in peace on a sustainable, life-supporting earth, but Nero is too absorbed in his personal high-tech hobbies (and his mass-market, wasteful politics) to get involved with all that. BTW, slide rules had a 350-year history http://www.hpmuseum.org/sliderul.htm http://www.sliderule.ca/intro.htm and good slide rules still command prices comparable to modern HP calculators, e.g.: http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/nib.html#catalog http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/pocket.html#catalog Slide-rule *emulation*software* for PC: http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/srsoftware.html The slayer of the slide rule: http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/hp.htm What computing (or any other) devices will still work after an EMP, or after batteries would run out, and did you happen to keep any? Gemperlein: Did you ever blow anything up? Bill Hewlett: Oh, sure... I think it was a doorknob... A doorknob is compact... you can put explosives in it, use it as a bomb. http://www.thetech.org/revolutionaries/hewlett/i_a.html
From: Jean-Yves Avenard on 2 Jun 2006 06:42 timite_h wrote: > According to me all educationnal graphing calculators(high end and low > end) should have nowadays this minimum: > *A high resolution touch sensitive screen Which will ban this calculator on many math exams. > *A more graphic interface to fully take advantage of touch sensitive > screen see above > *A decent keyboard as the touch screen must be an improvement to > calculators and shouldn't remove one good feature of calculators:a > great keyboard for computations > *Pretty Print and Equation Writer even for purely numeric calculators this is already present in many calculators. PrettyPrint/Equation Writer was used all the time in a machine like XPander... Looking at the screen capture of the new TI n'spire seem to work in a similar fashion JY
From: Veli-Pekka Nousiainen on 2 Jun 2006 07:47 "Han" <rs1n(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message news:1149188912.775375.293910(a)y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com... >> According to me all educationnal graphing calculators(high end and low >> end) should have nowadays this minimum: >> *A high resolution touch sensitive screen > > A high resolution screen is fine. However, there is no point for touch > sensitive screen. Part of the reason why calculators are not obsoleted > by PDAs with the same software is because of the keyboard (many keys > that provide one single button press whereas a touch screen interface > would require extra menu navigation). Moreover, the cost would be > higher, and if there should be any repairs needed for the screen, that > cost would be higher as well. > > There are solutions currently available to do what you want. Many PDAs > are currently able to run Emu48 or some variant of it; yet you still > see a high demand for the actual calculator on, say, eBay (and I don't > mean just the HP48GX models). > >> *A more graphic interface to fully take advantage of touch sensitive >> screen > > This may be nice for educational purposes (i.e. teaching tool) but it > only slows down productivity. On an exam, I would rather be spending my > time solving problems and not navigating menu systems. The HP49 series > didn't quite get it right. It was nice to have the choice between > graphical vs menu interface; however, the keyboard layout seems to > cater to the graphical interface. > >> *A decent keyboard as the touch screen must be an improvement to >> calculators and shouldn't remove one good feature of calculators:a >> great keyboard for computations > > A great keyboard is really the only manual input needed. > >> *Pretty Print and Equation Writer even for purely numeric calculators >> > > Agreed. How about having BOTH !! A good keyboard with F1...F6 menu, assignable keys, CAT, etc AND touchscreen + drop-down menus
From: timite_h on 2 Jun 2006 13:04 > > According to me all educationnal graphing calculators(high end and low > > end) should have nowadays this minimum: > > *A high resolution touch sensitive screen > Which will ban this calculator on many math exams. Well it would be stupid to ban a calculator designed to replace the TI84+/HP39G level of calculator just because it has a touch sensitive screen. > this is already present in many calculators. I don't think so at least not out of the box. Even the TI89 require an add-on to have equation writer. > PrettyPrint/Equation Writer was used all the time in a machine like > XPander... > Looking at the screen capture of the new TI n'spire seem to work in a > similar fashion Off course with both know that TI-Nspire is inspired from XPander. HP has been very stupid to cancel this one.
From: timwessman on 2 Jun 2006 13:12
> Off course with both know that TI-Nspire is inspired from XPander. > HP has been very stupid to cancel this one. HP has made several mistakes in the past few years. . . =) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carly_Fiorina TW |