SOLVE HP

[lemontea]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo...teve-jobs/

“The cure for HP is not cost-cutting; the cure for HP is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

[Lonewolf]

(05-02-2014 10:05 PM)lemontea Wrote:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo...teve-jobs/

“The cure for HP is not cost-cutting; the cure for HP is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

Which CEO do you think was most responsible for the decline of the HP scientific calculator division?

/Silicon Valley Regards

[walter b]

(08-26-2014 01:47 AM)Lonewolf Wrote:  Which CEO do you think was most responsible for the decline of the HP scientific calculator division?

You can't change the past - you can only influence the future (at least for v<c ).

d:-)

[cutterjohn]

I don't think that it was any CEO's problem(other than possibly the one with the brilliant idea to move calcs out of Corvalis), but generic apathy and likely underfunding.

As alluded above, I think the real problem came when they essentially closed corvalis and beebopped the calc div all over the place, cheapened mfg quality, and apparently forgot about doing even minimal marketing. Which would be, probably, late 90s as I really don't recally using calcs much in HS, and at uni (engineering/science) it was pretty much all HPs with nary a TI(or other) in sight that I can recall.

Apparently button mashing is the thing for K-12 math now(at least in public schools, which I didn't attend so it might not be as new for them as I'm thinking) and TI has that sewn up.

Uni: Good math teachers can write perfectly adequate exams that DO NOT REQUIRE a calculator at all. I can't remember ever using a calc in calc I-III/diffeq/linear algebra/etc. Same should go for SAT/ACT/etc. Was a bit handy for CompSci too as far as quick base conversions/etc. went just to save a bit of time but really wan't necessary there. Never used a calc in general chem I&II and Orgo I&II that I could recall... did use those molecular modelling tinker toys once or twice though...

OTOH it seems that engineering profs loved exams where calcs were very helpful, and since I had an HP that handle matrix operations(plus a bunch of util progs that I wrote for homework/etc.) and was lazy would utilize those to a great degree, just do a quick hand (back fillin }) to show work and check results(saved me a good deal of time). Physics was about the same. At the end of the day it was merely a bit of a time saver.