An HP-34E?

[Matt Agajanian]

Hello all.

As the Series E/C offered the 33 and 38 in both constant and temporary memory, why was there only the 34C and not a 34E as well?

[Katie Wasserman]

It seems to me that with up to 210 program steps no one would want to buy a volatile memory version of the 34C. The 33E and the 38E could be sold to people who only occasionally needed to run a small programs and wanted to save $20 or $30 on their purchase.

[Matt Agajanian]

Good point. Now that you mention it, with 224 steps and 26 registers, the mag card functionality does seem a nice compromise to the HP-67's lack of Continuous Memory. And yes, there is a practicality which a long tern storage becomes benificial when it comes to having so much nemory on the 34C.

[kakima]

I think it was also a matter of timing. The 33E and 38E came out first, followed by the 33C and 38C. By the time the 34C came along, there probably seemed to be little point in also putting out a 34E.

[Matt Agajanian]

Thanks for the remind. Remembering back when I picked up HP Digest, I remember how the Spice Series was introduced and then, a year later the Cs were released along with the 34C.

[walter b]

After the 25C, anything lacking "Continuous Memory" or alike was simply outdated for serious applications. The 33E/C were something like a relaunch of the 25/25C - no real reason to buy a new calculator. But the 34C was progress! After all it was (and still is) HP's LED calculator featuring the highest calculating power per volume -- simply unthinkable to get it without "Continuous Memory".

Just my personal view.

d:-)

[Matt Agajanian]

Well, considering the 33 had three subroutine levels as well as two-var statistics with LR, it seemed quite an improvement over the 25. Then, with the release of the 34C, it would seem the 34C a best option as an affordable and versatile compromise to the full featured 67.

[Mike Morrow]

(12-15-2013 09:21 PM)Matt Agajanian Wrote:  Then, with the release of the 34C, it would seem the 34C a best option as an affordable and versatile compromise to the full featured 67.

The HP-67 was my first HP...it and its accessories cost me two months of my take-home pay as a naval officer in 1977. I had a lot invested!

However, in many ways I don't think the 67 can be termed full-featured, when it lacks the SOLVE and INTEGRATION functions that the 34C pioneered for HP hand-helds. IMHO the 34C is, overall, the firmware-quality high-point in HP's LED scientific calculator line. Too bad it had such pathetic mechanical construction. And it is probably the slowest programmable that HP ever made. It appeared two years after the HP-67.