The programmable calculator the HP-30b should have been

[Joseph_21sv]

(09-01-2014 06:07 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  

(09-01-2014 04:12 AM)Den Belillo (Martinez Ca.) Wrote:  Yes; the 20b/30b display is sub-optimal, but it's cheap.

The display is again a function of the CPU chosen. The processor can directly control a maximum of 400 LCD segments. That is how many there are on the 30b's display. Controlling any more would require an external chip (more expensive) or a different CPU (probably also more expensive at the time).

The build cost for the 30b is likely at the low single digit dollar level. There really isn't a lot of room to do anything at these levels.


- Pauli

But honestly, how much more expensive is a CPU that can directly control as few 90 more display segments? How much more expensive would a CPU like that have made it to build the 30b at the time in question (the beginning of the 30b development cycle)? Just twice as much, probably? And it isn’t exactly like HP doesn't have enough money that they could have spent what little extra it would have cost to use the CPU they should have used originally to build the 30b and not even come close to going bankrupt even accounting for everything else they are doing, so why didn’t they just do it? Is it that HP’s philosophy is so narrow that it does not dream of the existence of a “progressive conservative” ideology so that they may notice people with such an ideology in the business community? After all, HP even already makes a programmable business calculator with a normal two line display, and it sells well even in spite of its awkward programming model. So, why didn’t HP just put down the extra money so that they could make the calculator they were probably actually thinking of making? Allow me to say it once again, HP, as a company, just has too narrow a philosophy to dream of enough of the things their calculator customers and individual employees are thinking about the calculators that they are making, used to make and may make at any time in the future. This is why HP calculator fans need to independently build the calculators that HP itself is probably thinking of building but seems too narrow-minded to actually build. This includes the “HP 12c Super-Platinum” referred to in my previous post.
As for the 43s, I am interested in getting one if it ever sees the light of day. However, the discussion of it—and the 34s—here misses my point that the programmable calculator the HP-30b should have been is still fundamentally a financial calculator, notwithstanding that it might still be preprogrammed for un-financial functions such as trigonometry in degrees and radians.