Which hardware revision do you have?

[HP67]

(06-01-2014 08:24 PM)bhtooefr Wrote:  Whereas some of us, even those that had no interest in those features, have decided that they were right in their decision to make the 50g their last new HP calculator, rather than reward HP for that stunt.

I think Joe Horn said it earlier, there is the difference between early and late adopters. I have always worked in an area where technology moves fast but the application of it has been very conservative. I don't get the latest of anything except at work. I let other people work the bugs out of stuff before I buy it, probably because I'm constantly confronted with the realities of insufficient and declining budgets and increasingly bad managers and increasingly out of touch marketing departments, all incented to deliver things "on schedule" (whatever that means) and punished if they're not. Whether the product is ready or not doesn't seem to factor into their equation.

I don't want to play sysadmin on a calculator, I refuse to be tied to Windows, and I don't want to have to hang out on a forum just to use a calculator. I want to want to hang out on a forum with people who like and use the same tech stuff I do.

On the other hand, look how much influence the early adopters have had on the Prime. For one it's unusual to have company people hanging out on a forum and actually listening to what is being said. It's even more unusual that they actually answer questions, explain motivations, and implement suggestions and fixes based on the customer's experience. HP did a lot right on this, even if it was just giving permission for their guys to post on forums. Many companies don't allow that, even on the employee's own time.

That does not mean that this apparent public alpha test of the Prime was smart on HP's part. Personally and with the disclaimer that I didn't buy a Prime and am not interested in owning one, I'm extremely disappointed and frankly pretty surprised that the project has been mismanaged to this extent. From the outside it seems there are communications and quality problems and that gets back to a lack of quality technical management, and probably a lack of autonomy of technical management, that stems from poor senior management. All that stuff is typical of so-called market-driven companies. And it always affects the people and products in destructive ways.

I think if HP would have sent out limited batches to people on this forum, to the hpcc, and whatever other HP-enthusiast venues there are, and did thorough alpha and beta tests and had the discipline to wait until the product was ready for sale before they started selling it, then HP could have created a lot of good will and avoided a lot of angry customers. People who know they are working on an alpha or beta product come from a totally different angle than somebody who spent money on something he thought he could use without significant problems or surprises.

The guys on this forum are mostly old-time HP enthusiasts and more technical than average. If the problems that are going on here are also occuring in the wild in the "education market" the the Prime is targeted to, then the way this has been handled is nothing short of a disaster and an embarassment for a company like HP.

I hope they get their priorities in order and get the management straightened out on this project. Because it's very clear they are not communicating internally, not understanding QA, product delivery and many other fundamental things, and not positioning the product and features clearly to the marketplace. Nobody should have to find out that his new wireless-enabled calculator isn't.