Why are the HP Prime and HP-35s so unpopular?

[Dave Britten]

(01-24-2021 08:46 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  

(01-24-2021 03:57 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  It's odd that HP never tried including a solar cell on the Voyagers, given how incredibly low their power consumption is.

Discussed often, back in the day.

One not too obvious consideration is the Voyagers were intended and built to be much tougher than your average calculator, able to be roughly handled for on-site, workplace use, and the solar cells of the period were not as rugged as they've become in the intervening years. If they considered it at all, it's possible the design team concluded the ruggedness would have been compromised if solar-powered.

And of course, since these machines lasted literally years on each set of cells, a user was never surprised by sudden or unexpected loss of battery power.

Yeah, those seem like the most likely explanations. They made them SO power efficient, that there wasn't really any reason to increase the manufacturing costs and decrease durability when it already costs far less than a dollar per year to power the calculator. You could almost jam a couple electrodes into a potato to run the thing.