HP Prime or HP 50g

[Tim Wessman]

(10-07-2014 07:23 PM)Craig Thomas Wrote:  Hp IS on the verge of laying off 50,000 or more people, according to the latest news.

Um, no. They've been laying off (retirement offers) for months now. They did announce 5000 more, but that 55k isn't correct.

However, your statement is true. You or I have no idea if they decide to close things down tomorrow. Big companies are like that unfortunately. :-(

[cutterjohn]

(10-07-2014 07:45 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  

(10-07-2014 07:23 PM)Craig Thomas Wrote:  Hp IS on the verge of laying off 50,000 or more people, according to the latest news.

Um, no. They've been laying off (retirement offers) for months now. They did announce 5000 more, but that 55k isn't correct.

However, your statement is true. You or I have no idea if they decide to close things down tomorrow. Big companies are like that unfortunately. :-(

Remember IBM of days gone by and similar commentary, but HP was never IBM and will never be...

[Craig Thomas]

(10-07-2014 07:45 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  

(10-07-2014 07:23 PM)Craig Thomas Wrote:  Hp IS on the verge of laying off 50,000 or more people, according to the latest news.

Um, no. They've been laying off (retirement offers) for months now. They did announce 5000 more, but that 55k isn't correct.

However, your statement is true. You or I have no idea if they decide to close things down tomorrow. Big companies are like that unfortunately. :-(

"HP today confirmed yesterday's report that it plans to split itself into two companies, one for PCs and printers and another for business technology and services. HP also said its layoffs, which are already in full swing, will affect 55,000 people by the time they're done. For comparison's sake, Google's entire employee base is 47,756.

HP had 317,000 employees as of October 2013. The company got rid of 36,000 people by July of this year. HP was planning total "employee reductions" of 45,000 to 50,000 people, but it will now push that to 55,000 "to fund investment opportunities in R&D and sales," the company said in a presentation for investors today."

This would imply another 19,000 layoffs.

Hope you guys survive the cut.

Craig

[cutterjohn]

Just sad how many US companies are raped in the name of SHORT TERM profit and NOTHING else...

[EDIT]
Hell, even IBM is a VERY PALE shadow of what it once was now apparently going to tailing the hyped OMG cloud crap and other sorts of general uselessness... oh and hiring every cheapass foreigner they can manage to find that works for subpar pay... hello downward spiral!
[/EDIT]

[ColinJDenman]

(10-08-2014 03:17 AM)cutterjohn Wrote:  Just sad how many US companies are raped in the name of SHORT TERM profit and NOTHING else...
...
oh and hiring every cheapass foreigner they can manage to find that works for subpar pay... hello downward spiral!

Agree with the first, but the latter is just "typical american xenophobic bullshit" ;-))). No flames please ;-)

IMHO...
What made those companies great once was the dedication and knowledge of the engineers and a lighter dose of management and beancounter horseshit.

HP hasn't been the HP that inspired this museum in decades.

[Han]

(10-08-2014 04:05 PM)ColinJDenman Wrote:  

(10-08-2014 03:17 AM)cutterjohn Wrote:  Just sad how many US companies are raped in the name of SHORT TERM profit and NOTHING else...
...
oh and hiring every cheapass foreigner they can manage to find that works for subpar pay... hello downward spiral!

Agree with the first, but the latter is just "typical american xenophobic bullshit" ;-))). No flames please ;-)

No flames necessary... look no further than Infosys:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/269...rkers.html

[Craig Thomas]

(10-08-2014 04:05 PM)ColinJDenman Wrote:  [quote='cutterjohn' pid='19988' dateline='1412738268']


IMHO...
What made those companies great once was the dedication and knowledge of the engineers and a lighter dose of management and beancounter horseshit.

HP hasn't been the HP that inspired this museum in decades.

I could agree more, but it isn't possible. :-)

[dbbotkin]

Some perspective . . .

I first used an H/P calculator in 1972 and have been both a calculator user and "in business" since then.

Here's how things were back then.
1) "Down-sizing" had not begun, so there were more layers of "management," not less, and yes, beans were counted then too.
2) Legal departments (if they existed at all) were small and meek.
3) There were no PC's, portable phones, PDA's and if an engineer or finance guy (like me) wanted to calculate something, they used a calculator by h/p or TI.
4) Foreign manufacture? Not likely. Foreign markets? Same calculator, same manual, higher price.
5) When I bought my h/p 67, I was a "high-paid, Wall Street guy" (with a young family and a mortgage) and I had to think about whether I could afford the h/p 67 purchase. (that is not a "humble-brag," just a statement of the relative movement of calculator prices and some US incomes)
6) Oh, and shareholders were fortunate if they got a dividend and a copy of a glossy Annual Report

Here's what seems different today:
1) "Marketing" has replaced "management" both in numbers and more so in power
2) Legal departments have even more power than do the marketing departments
3) Calculators (if you can call them that) are everywhere, but to what use are they put? Certainly not maxing out the power of the device on work-related problems.
4) Everything comes from Asia manufacturers, as "designed" in the US, and will be sold worldwide. Marketing materials, manuals, support, etc. are all "local-language" and conform to a plethora of government standards (read the backside on your Prime)
5) We put a man on the moon using slide-rules for math, but now school kids have the power of a 1970's super-computer in their pocket for the price of $20 in 1970 terms.
6) Now Corporate shareholders can force a business to focus on short-term profits because that is where the big bonus bucks are found.

How can this be? Well, consider that "marketing" dances to the beat of demand, one need look no farther than the mirror to find the cause. We choose products based on lowest cost, latest features, social-media support and if they don't work out, some law firm will file a class-action suit on behalf of all us poor purchasers. (for a measly 35-50% of the award)

So, we should be kind to the folks who labor as engineers for the mega-corps and still take time to help out on the user forums--they are the last thread of support with actual knowledge of how things work.

[Steve Simpkin]

Very well said, but very sad as well.

[Chris Pem10]

We're lucky we can still even produce engineers in this educational climate (USA):

My oldest daughter is in the "gifted" program at her middel school (USA). Her school emailed me a 36 page legal document today outlining her "rights" pertaining to recieving ANY changes in her circurliculum vs the standard one. 36 freakin' pages!

When she was in the 1st grade, I asked her teacher (not the "gifted" program instructor) if she could give my daughter some harder math homewook. The answer was... "I'll have to speak with the District's Mathematics Program Director for permission to change her IEP (Individial Education Plan) to include areas outside of her standard IEP... blah, blah, blah...".

Teacher's are POWERLESS to make a difference in a child's life... their hands are tied ! She couldn't hand my daughter a multiplication table without first satisying a 36 page cover-our-collective-azzes legal document. The process takes weeks. Meahwhile, kids in India are learning math in dirt floor buildings with no such restrictions.

Sorry for the rant...

[DrD]

I would just be so disappointed in that program that I would ... er, well ... reinforce my child's education, myself. (That is but just one of my many character faults!).

By the IEP standard you've described, probably typical of most public education programs, imagine how excellent your child would perform 'in school', if your child's individual education plan were supplemented by home school augmentation!

Paraphrasing, "We don't need no stinkin' IEP's"

Yeah! If it weren't for public education and politics, {or vice versa}, where would this country be?? (Er, uh, wait a minute ... my drone just reported, "Phantom Connection Lost!")!

-Dale-

[dbbotkin]

These seemingly senseless requirements (e.g. in our public education system) didn't happen because a few teachers thought a "36-page legal document" would be a wicked prank to play on parents.

No, somewhere some parent (or more likely, a group of them) got some misinformation from the internet (this is rife in my community) and complained to the school board, sued the school or whatever, because their "little Johnny" wasn't being treated properly. The school then "lawyers-up" and presto: a 36-page manual on how to add a harder math problem or two to a kid's homework.

There are so many things that were part of the learning that took place fifty years ago that are simply impossible to do in school today, mostly because they are considered "unsafe."

Unsafe, hell: they were downright dangerous. But we learned something useful: my 9th-grade science teacher made us change a tire. The whole class, everyone of us, girls too, had to jack up the car, remove and replace the tire and let the car back down safely. We did not get a man to the moon without some kids first trying it out with fireworks and a frog, that I know for a fact.



(the frog was released unharmed)

[Chris Pem10]

I realize that teachers are not to blame here and never meant to imply otherwise. Teachers are great; "educators" on the other hand...

The irony is staggering. The exact same document that guarantees that a disabled child receive an education equal to that of his peers is the exact same document that is preventing a teacher from "teaching outside the box" to my daughter.

My twin brother has Downs. We're in our 40's now. His public education consisted of sorting washers and learning to wipe down tables. Contrast that to my my neighbor, an 11 year old boy with Downs: he receives the same education as his peers. That document is worth its weight in gold to his parents, and I'm thrilled he is getting the education her deserves.

So the 36 page document is a double-edged sword; helping some while holding back others.

But to get back on topic. Get a Prime and a 50g. Use velcro to adhere them back-to-back. Then you've got the best calc money can buy.

[RyanB]

(10-09-2014 02:47 PM)Chris Pem10 Wrote:  But to get back on topic. Get a Prime and a 50g. Use velcro to adhere them back-to-back. Then you've got the best calc money can buy.

I love this idea. Seriously.

I am a practicing engineer and my reason for abandoning the Prime at work in favor of a 50g or 48g may seem silly, but here goes: it's the solve application.

My common use of my calculator is to do a quick numeric solution to a simple equation. Usually an equation with several variables and I want to solve for just one of them (knowing all the others).

Pick up my 50g, enter equation (in numeric solve), enter all the known values, highlight the variable I want solved, press solve. Done. I do this many times every day, often with many different equations with all sorts of different variables.

On the Prime....ugh. Enter equation, and immediately be thwarted because you didn't predefine all those variables in the equation! I just want to enter the equation and solve, stop making me predefine everything because I'm going to give you the numeric values to substitute for those other variables.

It was so slow and cumbersome that I had to give it up. I kept finding myself starting on the Prime and then grabbing my 50g to get a quick answer and keep working. My prime sits at home gathering dust, which is a miserable fate for such a device.

I accept if I am mistaken in some way, but I wanted to give my experience as a regular working engineer. I think there is some way you can make the Prime ask you if you want to create a variable you haven't previously defined, so maybe I'm the problem.

-Ryan

[Michael]

A very interesting ranking.

[Claudio L.]

(01-28-2015 01:15 PM)Michael Wrote:  A very interesting ranking.

Until you get to these parts...

Quote:"Texas Instruments has been around since the early 90s, so they know what they’re doing"
"We love that it has a memory card slot totaling in 2.5MB of storage space"

Obviously written by somebody who doesn't know much about calculators.

[Michael de Estrada]

(01-25-2015 05:35 PM)RyanB Wrote:  I am a practicing engineer and my reason for abandoning the Prime at work in favor of a 50g or 48g may seem silly, but here goes: it's the solve application.

My common use of my calculator is to do a quick numeric solution to a simple equation. Usually an equation with several variables and I want to solve for just one of them (knowing all the others).

Pick up my 50g, enter equation (in numeric solve), enter all the known values, highlight the variable I want solved, press solve. Done. I do this many times every day, often with many different equations with all sorts of different variables.

On the Prime....ugh. Enter equation, and immediately be thwarted because you didn't predefine all those variables in the equation! I just want to enter the equation and solve, stop making me predefine everything because I'm going to give you the numeric values to substitute for those other variables.

It was so slow and cumbersome that I had to give it up. I kept finding myself starting on the Prime and then grabbing my 50g to get a quick answer and keep working. My prime sits at home gathering dust, which is a miserable fate for such a device.

I accept if I am mistaken in some way, but I wanted to give my experience as a regular working engineer. I think there is some way you can make the Prime ask you if you want to create a variable you haven't previously defined, so maybe I'm the problem.

-Ryan

No Ryan, you're not the problem. The Prime has a lot of neat capabilities and is much faster than the 50g, but in many ways it is a lot less convenient to use. I bought my Prime long after I retired as a practicing engineer as a toy to keep my mind from atrophying, but would never have used it at work. In fact, a few years ago I bought a second 50g, and quickly cloned it by archiving the old 50g to an SD card, and then doing a restore on the new one. I still use my 50g more than I do the Prime for many tasks such as units conversions (much simpler) or date / calendar calculations, which incredibly was omitted from the Prime function catalog. I think the Prime has a lot of potential in the educational market, but don't think it will ever be a very good engineering tool.

[Thomas Radtke]

Used the Prime emulator but given up on it. RPL is very hard to beat, and the Prime's firmware is neither intended nor able to replace this beautifull operating system/interface.

To bad RPL will die with the 50g. Should get some while they're still on sale.

[Claudio L.]

(01-30-2015 08:07 AM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  To bad RPL will die with the 50g. Should get some while they're still on sale.

It doesn't *have* to die, we just have to make an open source replacement (sorry for the ad):

newRPL project Home page

I only wish this was a community effort, not just a one-man attempt to save RPL.

Claudio

[RyanB]

It dawned on me yesterday: I wish I could have the HP50g operating system in the HP Prime chassis. Calculator heaven?

-Ryan