17bii, 17bii+ and 30B, or "Why did the 30B die?"

[Zac Bruce]

Tim, thanks for the insights.

What a shame that it went down this way.

Is there any way for us to know whether HP is going to continue to develop new calculator products? I'm quite impressed with my Prime, but will we see anything further in financial or scientific calculators? Or now is it a case of the current offerings being as good as it gets, and there is no financial gain to be had when their current products sell OK?

I've been pretty impressed with the more recent offerings from Casio (!!) including the 911EX which looks like quite a nice basic scientific calculator, and it seems that they have some interest in continuing to develop new products. Perhaps we will see a re-branding of more products ala 300s+?


Regards,

Zac

[Jlouis]

If you consider an old finance calculator, the Sharp 1421 is amazing, actually a basic pocket computer that is more capable than the 12c. I bought one in box, mint, for half the price of an 12c. Try a search in this forum, IIRC Valentin Albillo is fan of those Sharps pocket computer.

Cheers

[Zac Bruce]

(08-09-2017 01:35 AM)Jlouis Wrote:  If you consider an old finance calculator, the Sharp 1421 is amazing, actually a basic pocket computer that is more capable than the 12c. I bought one in box, mint, for half the price of an 12c. Try a search in this forum, IIRC Valentin Albillo is fan of those Sharps pocket computer.

Cheers

Looks really cool; I just bought a newer Sharp EL 735s, mostly just to compare to the HP calculators.

Now I've got another item to add to the wish list; I'm already looking around for a HP 95LX. If I see one of these Sharp's I'm sure I'll pick it up.


Thanks,

Zac

[striegel]

(08-09-2017 01:55 AM)Zac Bruce Wrote:  ...
Now I've got another item to add to the wish list; I'm already looking around for a HP 95LX. If I see one of these Sharp's I'm sure I'll pick it up.
...

Any of the palmtops of the 95LX, 100LX, and 200LX are really good.

In December, 2016 I acquired a nearly-new looking HP 200LX 2MB from 1990 as part of a lot of 4 devices from a charity auction site. It was poorly identified in the description as being a PDA, so it pays to search creatively (and to ALWAYS be looking).

For the bargain price of $89.14 I got the 200LX, an HP iPaq, a Palm One, and a very interesting Kim Tu Dien GD7000M.

Alan

[Thomas Radtke]

"Why did the 30B die?"

I imagine the target audience prefer something simpler to operate. The RPL-implementation of the solver (starting with the 18C) is hard to beat in terms of simplicity and power, probably that's why the 17B family has survived until today despite the 12C being an icon in finance.

[HP67]

The keys on my 30b are perfectly fine. I think it died (aside from the obviously correct answer Tím gave) is its horrible UI. My 12C is much faster to use because of the thought that went into its layout and the fact nothing is buried in menus. As fast and capable as the 30b is, it's too frustrating to actually use for anything. Back in the drawer you go...

[Gene]

The UI was set up that way to specifically aim at the TI BAII Plus. For good or bad, that's pretty much the UI of the BAII Plus. Very little difference.

Why go after it ? It has a pretty large following so I suspect HP wanted to try to get a piece of that. After all, if you want a financial calculator that works in a key-per-function approach, you already had the 10bII+ and/or 12c.

The hope may have been to capture incremental market share.

That does not seem to have been all that successful.

Oh and P.S. I much prefer the key-per-function approach myself!

[HP67]

Thanks Gene, I was not aware of that. Sad...