{"id":4,"date":"2004-05-17T21:49:41","date_gmt":"2004-05-18T03:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/?p=4"},"modified":"2004-05-17T21:49:41","modified_gmt":"2004-05-18T03:49:41","slug":"calculator-war-is-over-hp-vanquished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/posts\/2004\/05\/17\/calculator-war-is-over-hp-vanquished\/","title":{"rendered":"Calculator war is over; HP vanquished"},"content":{"rendered":"

After thirty years of Hewlett-Packard<\/a> and Texas Instruments<\/a> battling it out in the calculator market, it’s finally over. And it looks like TI has won.<\/p>\n

It saddens me. I don’t claim to know who makes the better calculator, or even if programmable calculators are still relevant in today’s world. But the battle certainly kept the technology humming along, and drove the prices lower and lower.<\/p>\n

HP’s calculators always had a certain amount of uber-geek cool about them. You had to be a serious geek to get that reverse polish notation stuff. And you could always be sure that nobody would ever ask to borrow your calculator more than once.<\/p>\n

What, you may ask, made me suddenly think of this? Well, my handy-dandy cheapo Sharp calculator is dying. Many LCD segments no longer work. I need a new calculator, and for some reason, I thought about HP. I’ve always secretly longed to be a part of the elitist HP club.<\/p>\n

But do you think I could find one? Hell, no! I went all over town. But the only HP calculators I ever found were bottom-end non-programmable non-RPN boring calculators. If it ain’t RPN, it just ain’t a real HP.<\/p>\n

No HP-32Sii<\/a>, no HP-48. I couldn’t even find models that they currently have in production, like the HP-33s<\/a> (funny-looking update of the HP-32Sii). TI’s high-end graphing calculators, on the other hand, were very easy to find. Hence I conclude: TI has handed HP their asses.<\/p>\n

Not deterred, I went to the Internet. Apparently, HP no longer makes their highly-regarded HP-32Sii model. It’s been replaced with the HP-33s<\/a>, basically compatible but with a larger program memory (though still only 26 program labels), and a cheesy V-shaped rubber membrane keypad that the HP-faithful find repulsive.<\/p>\n

The only way you can get a real HP-32Sii now is second-hand. On eBay, 32Sii’s are going for around US$170, almost three times their price when they were discontinued (around 1999). There aren’t many investments that can generate that kind of return in five years.<\/p>\n

US$170 is a little rich for my blood. So, I ordered a new HP-33s<\/a> last week. I’m still waiting for it. I guess it wasn’t in stock at the distributor either. Maybe they’re firing up the production line now to make me one. Perhaps the last real HP calculator we’ll ever get to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After thirty years of Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments battling it out in the calculator market, it’s finally over. And it looks like TI has won. It saddens me. I don’t claim to know who makes the better calculator, or even if programmable calculators are still relevant in today’s world. But the battle certainly kept the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}