HP50g spins circles around the TI-89

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Greetings, my 50g came in the mail this week and has officially taken the place of my TI84|TI89 graphing calcs. Its not fair to compare the 84 with the 50g; but, the 50g is comparable with the 89 in several key areas, and the 50g wins hands down on all of them-- period.

I think the people at HP have made a tactical error in design and marketing where it comes to the 50g. I think they should have dumped the Prime, and reintroduced the 50g (50gc) with a color touch screen. The 50g is a better machine IMHO than the Prime, and the Prime is not competing well against the TI units (schools particularly). TI reintroduced the 84 with a color screen (doing well). Rather than discontinue the 50g, why not reintroduce it as the 50gc and put a really nice color touch screen on it (but keep the 50g intact)?

The other thing I'd do with the new 50gc is to make the ENTER key longer and place it horizontally across the center of the keyboard (left side) just over the two shift keys.

Anyway, its too new to me for a real review yet, but after half a week of fun and excitement the 50g and I are close friends. Of course, it remained in ALG mode for only about 50 seconds (how long it took me to find the mode key). The stack is fabulous, RPL is fantastic on this unit, it feels good too, and the case is really superb. Most of the menus make sense/ and the keyboard is very nice (better than I expected). The getting started booklet was great (and great fun) and the on-line and CD docs are really tops.

Well, so long TI... using strictly HP, or HP like, calculators /

Cheers,
marcus

[Manolo Sobrino]

I got my first TI 89 from a folk that had spilled soda on it. I could open it with a screwdriver and clean it: fixed it in 15 minutes and working fine after, a very clean design (see for instance https://www.takeitapart.com/guide/7, but using a pry tool/used card when needed). It took me several try-outs to open a 50g, (non-working, corrupted flash boot issue -the charms of ARM emulation-) and I was getting increasingly angry over the manufacturing quality after every iteration. The last straw was the piece of aluminium coated paper (really? a sheet of cellulose paper under a keyboard?) for RFI shielding and the cheap snap domes fixed to the board with tape... I have my own criteria on dependable tools and the 50g doesn't meet them. Not everything about it is bad though, I like the 50g screen better.

About the software in both units: the 89 is a coherent product with a great pedigree. Its simplicity is intentional, I didn't need to invest months in learning how to use it and I don't usually need to check how to do it. The 50G is a mixed-bag, sometimes it's an amazing device, other times the choices made there look brain-damaged to me. And then it comes with a ludicrous learning curve... When I was younger it looked totally cool to have such complex beasts for the fun of it, now I look first at the expected pay-off before jumping in with both feet. About such calcs for students, I don't think it's a clever idea for them to spend too much time on learning how to use their calculators, they have better things to learn and more urgent things to do.

I'm OK with HP killing the 50g, I can't help considering it a quick and dirt Kinpo hack. But IMO if you're serious about your customers you should give them a migration path for their RPL programs. I don't like being told for more than 20 years that it was the bee's knees and now see how it is discretely dropped. I keep an eye on HP's current offerings but I'm almost out, can't stand many things about the way they work... Too bad they are the only ones offering RPN. It's that or going after hard to repair collectors' items at crazy prices. I guess I'm getting too practical.

Anyway, enjoy your new 50g, yet I'd advise you to not throw away your 89, it can be a comparable time sink if you take the trouble to look for the many goodies available for it, though some are quite obscure now. For instance, Lars Frederiksen's excellent RPN which IMO is the kind of RPN implementation that should have made it to new calculators (yes, it's awful that it doesn't have an inverse key, yet there's little you can do if the TI folks don't put one in the layout) I use it quite often, as well the differential equations package from the same author.

[Gerald H]

I agree, Manolo, the TI-89 is better made & designed more for ease of operation.

Drawback for me is the very small print in menus etc.

Great advantage of HP models is Reversed Polish - lunatic to drop it.

[Claudio L.]

(04-30-2015 05:59 AM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote:  Rather than discontinue the 50g, why not reintroduce it as the 50gc and put a really nice color touch screen on it (but keep the 50g intact)?

They couldn't keep it intact, because the 50g architecture was maxed out. The old Saturn couldn't address any more RAM or ROM, or handle complex color graphics, even in its emulated form.
The entire core had to be rewritten from scratch, and once you decide to write a new core from scratch, it could evolve in any direction... and it took the direction the business people wanted (of course), otherwise it wouldn't have ever been done.

I believe RPL and its user interface is no longer commercially viable, therefore only an open source project can keep it alive, so that's what I'm working on.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

(04-30-2015 10:59 AM)Manolo Sobrino Wrote:  I got my first TI 89 from a folk that had spilled soda on it. I could open it with a screwdriver and clean it: fixed it in 15 minutes and working fine after, a very clean design . . .

Yeah, I agree to a point about the quality of the build and the overall design... I got my first 89 before my daughter went into middle school... and when she entered high school I gave it to her; shortly after that I bought myself another. Then, you guessed it, my son entered high school and I gave it to him... and I put replacing it on a back-burner... well, those babies are still $149 dollars more or less (and I was able to get the 50g for much less than half of the price of the 89. So, my kids have my 89's and I have one of the last of the 50g(s). Yesssss.

Well, I guess I also have to admit that the learning curve is a little steep/ but not for a geek!

Cheers,
marcus

[MarkHaysHarris777]

(04-30-2015 12:30 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  They couldn't keep it intact, because the 50g architecture was maxed out. . . .

Oh.

Claudio Wrote:I believe RPL and its user interface is no longer commercially viable, therefore only an open source project can keep it alive, so that's what I'm working on.

I suspect you are correct... and the main reason for my project as well... well, it may be that 'calculators' generally are not viable any longer! I am encouraged by the Swiss makers lately with their 15c look-a-like miniatures...

I guess I am surprised that the 50g was dropped without a migration path, too. But, they are going to be around for a while, and the ones we're buying now will be with us for some time... probably outlast me!

[Marcio]

(04-30-2015 01:16 PM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote:  Well, I guess I also have to admit that the learning curve is a little steep/ but not for a geek!

I think that is one of the reasons HP won't sell RPN calcs anymore. Although vocal, the "RPN community" is now a minority.

[Gerald H]

Manolo correctly criticises the build quality of the 50g, but what about the 49G? That model has its problems, but I haven't read of people criticising it for poor construction nor of it failing to work correctly.

I've used mine for c 15 years with no material problems - does anyone have a different experience?

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(04-30-2015 04:45 PM)Gerald H Wrote:  Manolo correctly criticises the build quality of the 50g, but what about the 49G? That model has its problems, but I haven't read of people criticising it for poor construction nor of it failing to work correctly.

I've used mine for c 15 years with no material problems - does anyone have a different experience?

The main concern with the 49G were the labels on the keys. Many showed them tearing apart after a few months.
All of mine, albeit seeing little to no use nowadays, are still like brand new. No sign of time.

[Sukiari]

(04-30-2015 05:59 AM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote:  I think they should have dumped the Prime, and reintroduced the 50g (50gc) with a color touch screen.

While I agree that the RPL line should not be abandoned, I wonder why it needs a color touch screen. What could a color touchscreen add in this application? It would certainly drain the batteries much more quickly, and there might be some fun games enabled by this technology, but for a math, science, and engineering pocket tool I do not think there would be much, if any, added utility. Frankly the color touch screen calculators on the market all seem like gimmicks and every mathematician I know (quite a few actually) scorn them.

I think that a more robust chassis, a backlight, and some weatherproofing would ensure the continued life of the platform. While there are claims that the Saturn is "played out" I don't think this is an inevitability - more that HP didn't want to invest the money in re-spinning it, or for that matter having to design the hardware and whatnot.

If there is to be a successor to the 50G it will be made by the community of RPL users, not by HP.

[Marcio]

(05-01-2015 12:24 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  Let's face it - if there is to be a successor to the 50G it will be made by the community of RPL users, not by HP. HP has decided that the textbook aid market for middle and high school students is their market and this is clearly evident by the state of the Prime, its marketing material, and HP's attitude toward quality which is nothing like the old HP that gave us so many classic high-quality, accurate math machines.

Get another 50G while you can, but don't worry too much. The Prime can't do a whole lot that the 50G can't, and what it does is riddled with bugs and plagued by a half-assed, modal implementation.

Printer ink is much more profitable than calculators these days anyway.

Very sad but so true.

The Prime is not the engineering tool as the 50g is now. The difference, however, is that one is discontinued while the other is expected to get firmware updates for the next, say, 10 years to come? It's on HP hands what next updates will bring, and let's not forget that it took many years (more than a decade?) for the 50g to become what it is today.

[Sukiari]

(05-01-2015 12:40 AM)Marcio Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:24 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  Let's face it - if there is to be a successor to the 50G it will be made by the community of RPL users, not by HP. HP has decided that the textbook aid market for middle and high school students is their market and this is clearly evident by the state of the Prime, its marketing material, and HP's attitude toward quality which is nothing like the old HP that gave us so many classic high-quality, accurate math machines.

Get another 50G while you can, but don't worry too much. The Prime can't do a whole lot that the 50G can't, and what it does is riddled with bugs and plagued by a half-assed, modal implementation.

Printer ink is much more profitable than calculators these days anyway.

Very sad but so true.

The Prime is not an engineering tool as the 50g is now. The difference, however, is that one is discontinued while the other is expected to get firmware updates for the next, say, 10 years to come? It's on HP hands what next updates will bring, and let us not forget that it took many years (more than a decade?) for the 50g to become what it is today.

Heh, you caught me between edits, where I took the part you quote out on reflection and to try not to hurt the feelings of those people who are still somehow attached to the company that currently calls itself HP.

But, on re-reflection, please don't edit my quote. It's the truth as far as I can tell, and I'm sure there are a lot more people other than you and I who believe it.

[Sukiari]

(05-01-2015 12:40 AM)Marcio Wrote:  The difference, however, is that one is discontinued while the other is expected to get firmware updates for the next, say, 10 years to come?

Why do you assume that the Prime will get more firmware updates? At one point HP just decided to stop producing updates for the HP 50g. I feel that at some point the HP hierarchy will decide that the Prime is similarly finished and that'll be that.

While earlier calculators did receive updates over their lifetime, none was released in such a buggy, crashy, sorry state and this (and expensive ink) is a very obvious symptom of a corporate disease that, as many have said, is eating HP away from the inside.

[Marcio]

(04-30-2015 05:59 AM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote:  I think the people at HP have made a tactical error in design and marketing where it comes to the 50g. I think they should have dumped the Prime, and reintroduced the 50g (50gc) with a color touch screen. The 50g is a better machine IMHO than the Prime, and the Prime is not competing well against the TI units (schools particularly).

It seems the Prime was their only alternative to compete against TI. Do you really think school kids would be able to use the 50g out of the box?

[Marcio]

(05-01-2015 12:52 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  Why do you assume that the Prime will get more firmware updates? At one point HP just decided to stop producing updates for the HP 50g. I feel that at some point the HP hierarchy will decide that the Prime is similarly finished and that'll be that.

Well, it seems the calc team is working on updates, collecting bugs reported by the community etc. Why wouldn't they release it if they know the Prime needs updates (some would even say 'desperately')?

[Sukiari]

(05-01-2015 01:00 AM)Marcio Wrote:  

(04-30-2015 05:59 AM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote:  I think the people at HP have made a tactical error in design and marketing where it comes to the 50g. I think they should have dumped the Prime, and reintroduced the 50g (50gc) with a color touch screen. The 50g is a better machine IMHO than the Prime, and the Prime is not competing well against the TI units (schools particularly).

It seems the Prime was their only alternative to compete against TI. Do you really think school kids would be able to use the 50g out of the box?

Simply tacking a color touch screen onto a half finished calculator isn't going to do it though. What was needed at the outset was the cooperation of the textbook publishing companies, who at this point assume that the student has a TI as do math teachers in a huge number of schools.

If the calculator was high quality (software and hardware) and offered capabilities beyond what TI already has, there will be a market. If not, there won't be. This is why I have said that the Prime's competition is Matlab, Maple, and Mathematica, not TI and Casio. The RPL system calcs were an ongoing, full featured, extremely useful tool and a successor needs to be indisputably better, not just faster and in color with a touch screen.

[Sukiari]

(05-01-2015 01:05 AM)Marcio Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:52 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  Why do you assume that the Prime will get more firmware updates? At one point HP just decided to stop producing updates for the HP 50g. I feel that at some point the HP hierarchy will decide that the Prime is similarly finished and that'll be that.

Well, it seems the calc team is working on updates, collecting bugs reported by the community etc. Why wouldn't they release it if they know the Prime needs updates (some would even say 'desperately')?

Faith is for religion, not consumer products.

[Marcio]

(05-01-2015 01:52 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  If the calculator was high quality (software and hardware) and offered capabilities beyond what TI already has, there will be a market. If not, there won't be. This is why I have said that the Prime's competition is Matlab, Maple, and Mathematica, not TI and Casio.

You must be joking!

(05-01-2015 01:52 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  The RPL system calls were an ongoing, full featured, extremely useful tool and a successor needs to be indisputably better, not just faster and in color with a touch screen.

I don't think there will be a successor, not made by HP, at least!

[Gerald H]

(05-01-2015 01:00 AM)Marcio Wrote:  It seems the Prime was their only alternative to compete against TI. Do you really think school kids would be able to use the 50g out of the box?

Do you really think pupils, students or calculator adepts can use the prime out of the box?

[Sukiari]

(05-01-2015 02:43 AM)Marcio Wrote:  You must be joking!

Not at all. Kids these days are using Wolfram Alpha instead of calculators to help with their homework, and scientists and professionals are using Maple, Matlab, and Mathematica. The inclusion of basic symbolic math in the 28c, better symbolic math in the 48, and even better CAS systems in the 49 and 50 as well as the modal CAS in part of the Prime indicates that HP has seen symbolic and CAS functionality as essential for what, 30 years now? TI and Casio agree. Why not go all the way and step it up a notch?