The death of calculator market?

[Thomas Radtke]

Win10? Our IT staff (ok, the one administrator) had a hard time making Win (even Pro) look professional.

What lovely days when calculators were used at work. The lower the productivity, the more fun a job was. Or is this just false memories? However, I loved my job as teacher in which the kids limited my productivity.

[celltx]

(10-14-2020 05:13 AM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  So, more engineers use calculators than math students? That would be wonderful, but doesn't sound plausible, does it?

This second report talks about scientific calculators, rather than graphing, programming, or CAS. The scientific ones are pretty much universal, not specifically optimized for schools.

BTW, in my organization, about half of engineers have and use scientific calcs, cheap Casio, for the most part.

[Thomas Radtke]

(10-14-2020 12:03 PM)celltx Wrote:  This second report talks about scientific calculators, rather than graphing, programming, or CAS. The scientific ones are pretty much universal, not specifically optimized for schools.

We use those at our schools (mostly).

(10-14-2020 12:03 PM)celltx Wrote:  BTW, in my organization, about half of engineers have and use scientific calcs, cheap Casio, for the most part.

May I ask what they're calculating?

[celltx]

(10-14-2020 06:07 PM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  May I ask what they're calculating?

Voltages, currents, areas, clock jitter, time constants, bandwidth, etc.

[JimP]

It would be a sad day if the calculator market dried up completely. Sure, “app”lications on smartphones have effectively (and in some cases quite nicely) removed the need for a physical calculator, but there’s the ever present threat that when one is speaking on the phone, there is a need for a calculation to be performed. At least among scientists....probably engineers too, can’t speak for physicians! As one who is yet to master the concept of switching from the “phone” application to any other without cutting off the conversation unexpectedly, I’ll gladly keep my trusty HP Prime and a few other go-tos handy at my desk to tackle the issue, without having to fire up some other kind of program requiring mouse input etc. This is not to say I don’t have a few calculator applications on my phone, but I still greatly prefer the separate device and won’t even travel anywhere without one. One day that might result in me being classified as a neo-Luddite, but that’s OK!

[Thomas Radtke]

Fortunately old HPs were build to last. It's safe to say one of my HP-15 or 32SII will survive me. Maybe all. Still sad to come here once or twice a year, not finding a thread about a new HP scientific pocket calculator.

Exciting times when HP calc division were already declared dead only to find Tim announcing HP33S, 35s or 15C LE (besides several financial calculators). I miss that.

Likewise sad was the death of RPL. I'm so happy I have one 48G and one 50G, allthough they see not much use unfortunately.

[John Keith]

I mostly agree with what Jim and Thomas said above, but with a bit more optimism. HP is a very large company while the market for calculators is relatively small. HP is also no longer the engineering-focused company it once was. It is thus not surprising that corporate management cares little for calculators.

On the bright side, there is much activity in both hardware (Swiss Micros, replacement boards for Classics) and software (NewRPL, new HP-41 ROMs, emulators). A small market is IMHO better served by small agile companies that can respond to the wishes of users, and the open source and DIY movements add even more ferment to the mix. I would like to see someone making calculators with the ruggedness and build quality of older HP's but I think few would be willing to pay what they would cost to produce.

I am a relative late-comer to HP calculators (my first HP was a 15C) so I don't personally have much nostalgia for the Classics though I do appreciate them. I certainly prefer real calculators with physical keys but Free42 (with keyboard clicks) and EMU48 (with haptic feedback) are pretty close, and a lot faster than the real calcs. I also use EMU48 on the PC quite often for the ease of loading and saving programs and transferring them to my HP 50g.

Realistically we are looking at a post-HP world, but that may not be such a bad thing after all.

[pier4r]

(10-15-2020 09:27 AM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  Still sad to come here once or twice a year, not finding a thread about a new HP scientific pocket calculator.

Well, for the target audience (size and realistic use) the HP prime is a monster. No need to announce something if you already overdo it.

I would care more about software update. In the past there was not much possibility to update the software, so one wanted a new HW. Nowadays it is the software update that shows that the interest is there or not. Being it the OS or the applications/library of programs.

[bhtooefr]

...speaking of the death of the market, has the Prime been quietly discontinued, or is it just removed from HP's store page?

Because I don't see it here: https://store.hp.com/us/en/plp/accessori..._15_200604

Only the following calculators are listed there:

Financial:

• 10bII+ (out of stock)
• 12C
• 12c Platinum (out of stock)
• 17bII+
  

Scientific:

• 10s+
• 35s (out of stock)
• 300s+
  

[Steve Simpkin]

(10-19-2020 12:55 PM)bhtooefr Wrote:  ...speaking of the death of the market, has the Prime been quietly discontinued, or is it just removed from HP's store page?

Because I don't see it here: https://store.hp.com/us/en/plp/accessori..._15_200604

Only the following calculators are listed there:

Financial:

• 10bII+ (out of stock)
• 12C
• 12c Platinum (out of stock)
• 17bII+
  

Scientific:

• 10s+
• 35s (out of stock)
• 300s+
  

I would not read too much into there being no Prime calculator on HP's store website. As mentioned in this thread (and many others) "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." Wherever you order it from, just make sure you are getting the latest G2 version.
https://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-13...#pid120456

[BillBee]

I use a 11c (now a DM15) for work. Usually stats stuff ~ Student's t, or running discharge limit conversions from mass to concentration based. (On special occasions a ft^2 evaporation rate). Of course everything is first in Excel but (to me at least) it needs to run through the Hp for approval.

Working through a few used text books during the past months and I have found that one has to have a graphing calc. Many problem sets throw graphing calc (scatter and function) problems in there. Much different than my days in class where everything was on graph paper.

The phone apps are great but I did run into a problem of answering the cell and while opening the Free42 app did manage to hang up. Yes, user error.

-B

[Artur - Brasil]

Two weeks ago I could finally get the HP Prime G2! Wow, so beautifull.
So, I took it to my brother, who is a teacher in a reference University here in Brazil and he told me: "why someone would need a calculator nowadays? Computers have everything, cell phones, tablets". That was like a puch in my face!
Now, this thread here and it made me to remember another one, in the general forum, where many of us showed vast shelves with hundred of preciosities: boxes and boxes of shinning HP-15C, 41C, CV, CX, hundreds of accessories...
I'm a 54 year-old man. So, my so well cared-off collection: two HP-15C, one 41 and one 50G will serve for what? Make money? Show them to my sons: "see the power of HP calculators"?
Ha, ha! They will laugh at my face!
As we kept them in shelves, we may contributed for their completely no value in future... the inverse of what we want - to preserve their importance and may be do some money with our treasures...
My opnion, of course. Not to blame anyone.

[compsystems]

The calculator market will be reborn if Python is included, the trend of teaching algorithmic logic leans towards Python.
At Tiplanet you can see the great work TI is doing, not only by including Python and supporting libraries, but also calculator interfaces to education systems to teach electronics and robotics.

https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=256913

[Giancarlo]

Hello,
I agree on that.
There is a great opportunity. It is the first time that different platform adopt the same programming language reducing the the slopes initial phase of learning a new language, use code snippets found everywhere.
At this point why not extending this concept to a development board?
Hp shouldn’t be scared of the effort. In my opinion they shouldn’t develop a board by themselves, they should adopt one.
Nowadays there are consolidated boards without risks of choosing one that will disappear soon.
I think that hp should develop a limited amount of commands and then let the user comunity to proceed.

Arduino and raspberry pie need An extra effort that kid may not be able to cope with. Why we don’t rely to our calculator these first steps toward automation and robotics?

Most of us won’t need this. I am 53 years old and hp shouldn’t rely on me for growing its market. The most I can do is buying some calculators for my two daughters, that’s it.

That could create a comunity of young courious That overtime could be enthusiasTic of hp. This takes time and I don’t know if marketing (In general - not pointing at hp now) can listen to this.

Thanks

Giancarlo

[David22]

(10-03-2020 04:53 AM)fakuivan Wrote:  Calculators are not practical anymore, except for ....

I personally use the HP Prime as a toy where I can play around with giac CAS. I find the language quite interesting and it can be addictive sometimes, like lisp but with many math features. I sometimes find myself playing with it just like I'd do with games or social media on my phone sometimes leaving it on my nightstand or taking it to the toilet lol. The keyboard layout is horrible but... Debugging is practically non existent on my hardware, it crashes as soon as I call the debug function.

About using it on bed time (nightstand) I think it could be bad because LCD blue light: it may disrupt your near sleeping time. And worse, I suppose you can't adjust colour temperature as you can do on some smartphones and computers.

And not only on night: when I am reading about maths I prefer non distracting devices and not backlight displays: I prefer to use paper and monochrome LCD calculators or e-ink devices to read electronic documents.

I use my HP 48 and 50g for daily use and also to play around as you do. I am thinking on getting HP Prime but light emitting colour colour could annoy to me. So I don't know if, after getting HP Prime, I would continue using my 48/50g more than Prime.

In that sense I prefer no backlight monochrome LCD or e-ink (although I don't know about scientific programmable calculator with e-ink display). I find HP 48/50 relaxing on that aspect, compared to light-emitting displays on computers/smartphones and modern colour calculators.

About keyboard: is HP Prime keyboard layout worse compared to HP 48 or 50g? I am so used to 48 that I can type fast and naturally on it. It may be Prime isn't so designed to program on it, but more to program on PC.

[David22]

(10-03-2020 12:53 PM)medwatt Wrote:  Nsipre and Prime both very lacking and laborious for my use case. Neither of them allow you to create custom menus so that you can easily access your commonly used functions

So on HP Prime you can't create a custom menu or customize keyboard as you did on HP 48/50 series?

That is annoying for me, as on HP 48/50 I can do all that easily.

[David22]

(10-03-2020 04:52 PM)TheLastMillennial Wrote:  Just a few weeks ago, I posted a question on r/Teachers and r/matheducation asking about teacher's opinions on Assembly being removed on the TI-84 Plus CE.

I got a lot of good responses and I was surprised how many teachers mentioned they are ready to phase out calculators completely in favor of using software alternatives like Geogebra and Desmos. Now, my data is in no way scientific or final, but it's still relevant to this topic so I thought I'd share.

I think GeoGebra is good option: open soft and multiplatform (both of them are a requisite for this use IMO, because what you teach must me as independent from hard/SO as it can). Although I don't know if it is the best solution from all open and multiplatform CAS/geometry/etc soft.

I agree with using and teaching on a standard soft you can use on all type of computers, contrary for example to TI/HP models which want to keep you on its systems and where you can't export knowledge about using them to other machines (well, with HP 48 I could use an emulator on all hardware and OS, from Windows to Linux, and from PC to smartphone, but you are emulating it, not using that model on other hard/OS).

[David22]

(10-03-2020 07:50 PM)medwatt Wrote:  ... but for now, nothing is replacing the Casio 991 (or some equivalent) model.

I feel really constrained on non programmable calculators or on badly/weak programmable models, without enough freedom.

On the same way I fell constrained by having inly a few fixed variables, or losing content/history when I turn machine off/on or when auto-off automatically turns calculator off after a few minutes. All this occurs on Casio 991 or equivalents.

My first (barely) programmable device and my first scientific calculator was a Casio calculator. My first graphic calculator was a Casio (in fact, first graphic calculator on history: fx-7000G). And I own some modern Casio models, and I found them easy but very very constrained.

Even today most modern Casio calculators with complex number support can't handle most functions o complex arguments, while HP-15C did that on 1982. What is the point to support complex numbers only in a partial way? If you support them, support all available functions on them.

[David22]

(10-14-2020 08:06 AM)grsbanks Wrote:  

(10-14-2020 05:13 AM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  So, more engineers use calculators than math students? That would be wonderful, but doesn't sound plausible, does it?

And if that were truly the case, why are manufacturers clearly taking their cues from the education market and designing calculators made for students rather than professionals?

I think professionals continue using mostly their "old" calculators, ones they are used to (and they know how to operate), but they usuarlly don't buy new calculators. So student market is where most sales are done today and manufactures go for that market.

I think we can saw it even on HP a lot of years ago: there are a lot of HP fans who never came to newer RPL models (HP 28/48/49/50) from their old 4-level RPN models. They were used to old RPN and didn't want or were unable to adapt to more powerful and newer RPL model.

[David22]

(10-19-2020 12:55 PM)bhtooefr Wrote:  ...speaking of the death of the market, has the Prime been quietly discontinued, or is it just removed from HP's store page?

Because I don't see it here: https://store.hp.com/us/en/plp/accessori..._15_200604

Only the following calculators are listed there:

Financial:

• 10bII+ (out of stock)
• 12C
• 12c Platinum (out of stock)
• 17bII+
  

Scientific:

• 10s+
• 35s (out of stock)
• 300s+
  

I think you searched for normal scientific calculators, no for graphical calculators.

Or it may be HP in US is out of Prime calculators as it is cleaning old G1 Prime and awaiting for G2 Prime... from China :O (HP usually contracts manufacture in China) and with COVID some things are slower.

In Europe I can find HP Prime in HP online store. Here G2 Prime is the only model from time ago. I don't know the reason but HP started G2 Prime deployment earlier on EU than on US.

Obviously Prime has not been discontinued, it is a shortage/transition form G1 to G2 in US, I suppose.