Prime's current availability for purchase?

[nlj]

After a recent misadventure on the HP website and in the HP (US) online store, I'm wondering what is the "normal" way to buy an HP Prime? Is one supposed to buy through a dealer in the educational market? If so, how does one go about finding one?


There follows, for those who are interested (or have nothing better to do than read a short epic), a blow-by-blow account of my misadventure, culminating in an HP sales person claiming that "the HP Prime has been discontinued".

The saga began when I discovered that Best Buy in the States sells the Prime but that they won't ship outside the US.

It occurred to me that I might be able to buy a Prime directly from HP (from their online shop), or failing that, that they would be able to provide a list of dealers who sell it.

Well, a visit to the HP (US) online store failed to turn up the Prime, nor indeed was I successful (at that time) in finding any calculators there at all.

My next idea was to go to the product page for the Prime on the HP website and from there find a list of dealers. Maybe I was having a Bad Search Day, because it seemed improbably hard to find the page for the Prime on the HP website, but eventually I turned up two pages,

The first page [1] seems to be the main product page for the Prime. It has a "Shop" button right at the top. Perfect!

However, clicking on that button took me to the top-level page of the HP (US) store [2] where I had had the frustrating and fruitless search for the Prime earlier in the day. No sign of a Prime there.

[1] https://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/prim...rview.html
[2] https://store.hp.com/us/en

The second page [3] seems to be the main product page for calculators on the HP website. At the top of it is a headline that says "Introducing [sic] HP Prime Graphing Calculator" (although this headline is not a link and it seems to have no content underneath it). Beside the headline there's a "Shop Online" button. "Ah, here we go!" I think.

But no. This link goes to another page [4] at the HP (US) store, which seems to be the calculator department.

That seems promising at first, but only seven calculators are listed there (10BII+, 10S+, 12C 12C Platinum, 17BII+, 35S, and 300S+), no Prime. Notably, the 17BII+ is listed as out of stock, which suggests that the Prime is never sold here rather than merely being out of stock.

[3] https://www8.hp.com/us/en/prodserv/calculator.html
[4] https://store.hp.com/us/en/cv/accessorie...?cat=Hfz5e

I wondered why I had never found this calculator department when I was searching the store for the Prime, and discovered that it is a sub-department of "Displays and Accessories" which cannot, I think, be reached from the top level of the store because from there the available departments are "Top Deals", "Laptops", "Desktops", "Business PCs", "Printers", "Monitors", and "Accessories", and neither "Monitors" nor "Accessories" contains any calculators (or sub-departments).

In any case, no Prime.

[I reported the broken "Shop" and "Shop Online" buttons to HP. That was two weeks ago. Checking today, the only change they have made is that the "Shop" button at [1] now goes to [5] which is the "HP Accessories and Monitors" department of the store (yet another department that doesn't seem to be listed at the top level of the store), and from here the bewildered navigator can actually drill down to the "Calculators" department at [4].]

[5] https://store.hp.com/us/en/cv/accessories

Next, I used the store's online chat to talk to a sales representative who told me that "the HP Prime has been discontinued already".

I don't know what they meant by "already", but in any case this was rather shocking news.

The blow was ameliorated only by the hope that they might perhaps be lying -- as I find people in retail sales often do nowadays rather than admit ignorance on any matter.

[WillMarchant]

I ordered mine online at https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-prime-ha...Id=6348951

[grsbanks]

Most online stores in Europe will ship more or less anywhere. I bought my Prime G2 from derekenwinkel.nl and apart from the fact that someone forgot to send it initially, it arrived in good time.

I wouldn't bother with the HP store. It's basically broken and the people with the power to do anything about it at HP don't care.

[StephenG1CMZ]

I wonder whether the salesperson might have been referring to the Prime G1, as that has only recently been replaced by the Prime G2 in the US, despite the G2 having been available within Europe for some time now.
Or perhaps they were looking at the same pages that you had and assumed it was not available.
I just checked the Google Play site, and the Android HP Pro virtual calculator is still listed for download.

It might be worth asking the salesperson again, and specifically giving them the model number for the G2 version. Or download the virtual calculator instead.

[StephenG1CMZ]

(09-01-2019 12:29 AM)WillMarchant Wrote:  I ordered mine online at https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-prime-ha...Id=6348951

I just looked there (selecting Canada) and I didn't see the HP Prime listed.

[WillMarchant]

(09-01-2019 06:32 AM)StephenG1CMZ Wrote:  

(09-01-2019 12:29 AM)WillMarchant Wrote:  I ordered mine online at https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-prime-ha...Id=6348951

I just looked there (selecting Canada) and I didn't see the HP Prime listed.

Bummer. I don’t know if they’ll ship to Canada.

The Canadian Amazon.com seems to list the original Prime. But their USA store might ship a new version to Canada?

[jlind]

(09-01-2019 11:22 AM)WillMarchant Wrote:  

(09-01-2019 06:32 AM)StephenG1CMZ Wrote:  I just looked there (selecting Canada) and I didn't see the HP Prime listed.

Bummer. I don’t know if they’ll ship to Canada.

The Canadian Amazon.com seems to list the original Prime. But their USA store might ship a new version to Canada?

Keep searching using the G2's model number: 2AP18AA
Last I looked on Amazon US, the G2 wasn't available from Amazon, but there was one 3rd Party seller that just popped up offering the 2AP18AA for $226, about $90 too high. Amazon also has one seller advertising a "V2" which was a questionable tactic as it's the G1, Rev C. (i.e. V2 of the G1).

NewEgg has a 3rd Party seller (ATHQ) offering the G2 for $145
https://www.newegg.com/p/0X6-04K2-00001?...-_-Product

Rakuten has same seller, ATHQ, selling them for $140, with free shipping:
Currently looks like Rakuten is also offering a 15% discount with a SAVE15 code that can be applied during checkout when you get to the payment part - you have to remember to put it in, and then it knocks the total down. You also have to register with them and have an account, and sign in, to apply discount codes (won't work if you try to check out as an unregistered "guest" or if you don't sign in). That 15% knocks the price down to about $120 plus sales tax.
https://www.rakuten.com/shop/american-te...P18AA-MNN/

Best Buy is selling them for $150 - the highest other than the outrageous one on Amazon.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-prime-ha...Id=6348951

Best deal going right now is on Rakuten from their ATHQ seller. Same guy is selling them on eBay, but for more. I bought mine from him through Rakuten a little over a month ago, and Rakuten was offering a %20 percent discount on "office" stuff the time. Got while the getting was good because that disappeared in a couple of days. Now there's the 15% but there's nothing stating when that will disappear. The Prime G2 is out there, but it takes some looking. I had to use the model number in the searches and carefully sift through the results to eliminate all the G1 still being offered. Hope this helps.

John

[mjohnsonn]

Sure looks to me like one of these things is going on:

1. It’s over. Maybe no more trying to compete with TI with high end calculators for education.

2. A newer version of the Prime is to be released and the channel is being cleared of the old ones.

3. A completely new product to replace the Prime is in the works.

Hopefully it’s not (1). There could be odd timing for (2) or (3) if they discovered a ship-stopping issue during testing.

[DMaier]

(09-01-2019 05:28 AM)grsbanks Wrote:  Most online stores in Europe will ship more or less anywhere. I bought my Prime G2 from derekenwinkel.nl and apart from the fact that someone forgot to send it initially, it arrived in good time.

I am in Canada, and I also bought my Prime G2 from derekenwinkel.nl. It took about 2-1/2 weeks to arrive.

[Scarabscarabeus]

I bought mine on https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/oxfordeducationalsupplies.

Arrived by UPS - most surpised the next day.

Even more surprised - the latest G2 version D with the 256MB and 512MB ram.

Absolutely over the moon with the calculator.

[Olivier (WA)]

Rakuten offers a 15% coupon (code : SAVE15) and free shipping at the moment, for a total of $130.89.


https://www.rakuten.com/shop/american-te...=2AP18AA-N

[lschroeder1947]

(09-08-2019 12:31 PM)mjohnsonn Wrote:  Sure looks to me like one of these things is going on:

1. It’s over. Maybe no more trying to compete with TI with high end calculators for education.

2. A newer version of the Prime is to be released and the channel is being cleared of the old ones.

3. A completely new product to replace the Prime is in the works.

Hopefully it’s not (1). There could be odd timing for (2) or (3) if they discovered a ship-stopping issue during testing.

I think your right that something is going to happen. The lite / free pulled from Apple (iOS) and Google (Android) stores. Could have made lite version $2.99 to complete with Wolfram Alpha price. Students willing to pay S2.99 for a lite version but not $25 / $20 of their HP Prime Apple / Android Pro App. Advantage HP Prime Lite app over Wolfram Alpha App is that it is identical to their HP Prime physical calculator. The physical HP Prime calculator can be used in classroom where phones with Wolfram Alpha or similar programs are banned. Plus physical calculator can be used on College Board SAT and Advanced Placement tests were phones are banned as well.

Nothing like the current powerful HP Prime Lite to get students familiar with HP Prime physical calculator.

[StephenG1CMZ]

For my own purposes, I cannot see any point in having a Lite calculator as it was previously implemented - unable to run programs, though perhaps that would be useful in some exam situations.
I did see some ingenious workarounds using function definitions instead.

I could imagine some use for a cheap lite version able to Download and run, but not edit, user programs - as a way of distributing code to users.

But to be useful to me, that would require a very easy download process.
Creating a file, Cutting and pasting and deleting the default " EXPORT Main END" is hardly intuitive, when compared with tapping a JPG or pdf and having it render.

[burkhard]

HP's calculator web page (what there is of it) has been a disaster for years. It's hard to find (under Computer Accessories) and full of outdated information, pictures of older versions, bad links to nowhere, and an "online shop" that is usually out of many items.

It would seem that they have no actual calculator marketing department at all, just the couple of overworked engineers who are responsible for developing product itself. Granted, HP is under some intense market pressure, but they don't make their situation any better.

I'm not a Prime adopter (yet), but I really do like how they have continued to develop and improve the product over time, not just tossing it over the wall to an offshore manufacturer. I hope they are able to continue and ultimately find a good niche even if the revenues aren't what TI for example sees.

[TomC]

Just received a Prime G2 from Best Buy - a G2 - HP Product: 2AP18AA#ABA, SN 9CJ9...S9.

Memory APP (BlueShift <toolbox icon>) shows Memory: 246.70MB, Storage: 461.3MB

TomC