What would your ideal HP calc look like now?

[jebem]

(03-28-2014 06:25 AM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  At, say, $300 and with 'quality' keycaps, HP would produce for an even smaller niche market or maybe fail the market completely.

Today I was revisiting the famous Eric's "HHC 2013: Still Larger Scaled Reptiles of the Nordic Countries" video recording session at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WolGdu9Pb7A .
Eric comments about this RPN based calculator project technical details, batch production costs, and legal issues (FCC rules) on this business project.
It is good to note that this project is being presented at HHC since 3 years ago, just to show how difficult such a project is to be developed by a small group of people in part time hobby.

One big issue is high production costs of such a big project to be implemented at such a small scale (considering that the customer base will be very limited).
This will result in very high asking price for the hardware alone, and we don't know what the firmware business model will be used (Project WP-43S?).

That 300usd hypothetical asking price for such a device, assuming it will show high build and materials quality, is short to cover all the assets and work involved in the production at this small scale.
Eric even asked the audience about what they feel if one special model made from extruded aluminum were produced as well, considering that the asking price will be well above the 1000usd mark!