DM32

[jonmoore]

(06-05-2022 06:48 PM)LinusSch Wrote:  Saving keystrokes has never been about saving memory for me, I'm too young for that. It is about the speed of entering commands getting a little closer to the speed of thinking up the next step. It reduces my having to catch my train of thought, getting back to entering the commands from thinking ahead about what commands to enter.

I've never had that 'Rainman' ability to keystroke program at the speed of thought so typing commands out (or accessing them via menus) doesn't bother me!

Joking aside, I'm of that generation that tends to flowchart things before attempting to enter a program on a calculator (whatever the calculator, HP or other). I just find it useful to collect my thoughts in OmniGraffle (or similar) first before going near the calculator. And more often than that, I'm using a calculator in tandem with pencil and paper.

Funnily enough, I think SM have a great opportunity over the next few years. I suspect that the HP Prime will be the last ever high-end programmable scientific calculator with a HP badge. I'm not at all convinced that 3rd party licensees will be willing to invest the time and money to create and market a high-end scientific calculator that fits the needs of the education market. And sadly, the professional market that used to exist for previous high-end HP calculators no longer exists apart from in small pockets such as the MoHPC community.

I was speaking to one of the two main resellers of calculators to the UK education sector the other day and he's not even convinced that Casio and Ti will keep producing high-end programmable graphic calculators. The likes of Desmos is taking a significant chunk of their bottom line.

That's not to say that Casio and Ti won't continue to produce low-cost scientific calculators (or the HP licensees). The fx-991ex is the biggest seller Casio has ever produced. And it's not surprising, as it fits with the pre-college curriculum like a glove (with custom variations for regional curriculum differences). But for all its technical capabilities, its build quality is as cheap as you'd expect for a $30 calculator, and much to the majority of the education sector's delight, it isn't programmable.

Outside of SM, there's very little on offer for those looking for a programmable scientific calculator that goes beyond the capabilities of what's being produced for the education sector. But for SM to capitalise on this opportunity, they'll need to think beyond feeding the needs of the nostalgic. And in truth, only the DM42 achieves this in the current lineup. Much as the 41x is my favourite out of the pair, it's still at a fundamental level, a nostalgia-fest.

It seems that the long-promised WP43s is near to completion as Walter posted this on the SM forum over the weekend:

Quote:Looks like there are only 20 commands missing still - in total. Plus some fine tuning. The end is near!

Over the next 12 months, we could see the WP43s, DM32 and even a Plus42 firmware upgrade to the DM42 as part of the new SM lineup (wishful thinking on that last option!). And that's a decent segmented lineup of new calculator models that build on HP's legacy without being carbon-copy clones - as long as the SM team manage to extend the DM32 beyond the 32s/ii template in a manner that's fitting for the hardware platform.