How do you like the Woodstock calculators?

[jjohnson873]

Ahhh....I can feel the warm blanket of '70's computer/calculator nostalgia. Isn't your first calculator like your first girlfriend? In my case, the HP-25 was my first. I must have poured hours, days, weeks into learning every nook and cranny about programming my HP-25 while in college. I took the last slide rule class offered at my college and never looked back. The glow of the HP-25 display never failed to fascinate me and certainly cemented my decision to graduate with my EE degree. Gone are the days of that technology leap and now has given way to ever more powerful mobile computing platforms.
It's a bit of melancholy to hear of the passing of Tandy's John Roach a little over a week ago. I sold many 74HCT I.C.'s to Tandy/Radio Shack for the TRS-80 line of computers as they changed over from LS-TTL to the power sipping HC/HCT devices. But I digress.
Introduced in 1975, with the form fit of the HP-25 to your hand, the bright LED display to the high quality keys that never failed to provide a perfect response. What other items can last nearly 50 years with hardly any degradation in performance?
The HP-25 certainly isn't as powerful as today's calculators or mobile phones. But it still stands tall as a revolutionary design and holds a place in history as one of HP's classic designs that has carried many engineers through their college years and as a great design tool in many engineering companies.