Hmm...
"42SW"... I like it!!!
A watch (dang thing is JUST supposed to tell you the correct time) IS a very personal choice. I myself have three watches: one which I always wear to work, it's a Casio LCD digital so beat up it cannot possibly be hurt further; one I have for "dress", (a Citizen) whose major virtue is that it is fairly readable to my aging eyes while still looking dignified; and a Fossil retro I NEVER wear, that I just HAD to have when I saw it because it was a silly red-LED (press button to tell time) like my old (high-school) TI watch I remember so fondly. Unfortunately my old TI would display for about three seconds on one button-press; the Fossil stupidly forces you to hold its button down continuously-- making what was ordinarily a mere chore into a downright debilitation. Hate that watch, wish I'd never bought it.
By "gold-plated" (an admittedly clumsy word choice) I DO mean premium, cost-not-the-object, use of quality materials; but I do NOT mean "precious". I mean WORTHY.
Indeed I would LOVE a Uniax (DuPont Displays) polymer-LED screen (bright amber characters on black) on your 42"SW". A regular LCD with some expensive crystal doesn't rev me up at all. But a polarized filter to make glare less of a problem does make sense to me. Expensive, but RIGHT.
I would love tall-felling keys as I have on my 33c with their crisp "snick" detent; Hp gave that up as way too expensive. Yes it is. But to someone who wants to be darn sure that what he is keying is entered correctly, that tactile feedback is WORTH it.
I would urge a modern "data-port" of some capability, probably not HPIL, but maybe "CAN" or a decent speed USB-derivative. The idea of a peripheral team that magnifies the calc's abilities with data-gathering intelligence is one that intrigues me. TI has created an ultrasonic ranging device and an analog data-sampling device as add-ons for use by schools in their "Explorer" series-- a MAJOR reason our area schools fell in love with the TI-92 (and made district-wide purchases). I can imagine a set of surveying tools, or a multiport-simultaneous DMM/scope for doing electrical analysis... plugged in to our calc through a port of sufficient speed to allow these and storage of the gathered data.
The mag-cards of the 41 and 67 and so on were not just an interim step towards the 42's non-volatile memory, in MY regard. If you lose your 42's memory, or lose the 42 itself, well, you lose programs. You lose WORK. But if the 42"SW" had a SmartCard memory of say 32 or 64M, which I see as a natural for a premium calc of today, archiving programs, switching directories-full of routines, etc. would be DARN USEFUL.
I've not mentioned anything YET that cannot NOW be engineered into a 42"SW" in its current form-factor and, while it would be QUITE AN EXPENSIVE device, each of these improvements would add to what we already know as a highly-useful and productive tool. That's all I REALLY want: a tool that makes sense in every aspect. Updating and revising a product for today in some ways might sound heretical. But it oughta happen...
Democracy, Circuses and Bread:
There is a certain philosophy Marketing types often hold, and one that we often accept blindly and persistently from them, which says: always make --whatever you make-- best for the greatest number.
This democratization of product means, eventually, cheap but "ubiquitous" products-- you get them at Wal-Mart. And Wal-Mart is incredibly successful. The strategy is a good one, and many benefits derive from this approach. Not least is that, in production, it has often been true in the past that unless you implement the economies of scale, you cannot even get back the costs of beginning production. So large-scale production almost always dictated a mass-marketing approach.
I remember my neighbor of many years back, who was building a "custom" car. He labored long, loving hours on his jalopy, creating a body out of fiberglass. He explained to me how fiberglass was PERFECT for creating a single-copy car-- because metalworking was a terrifically difficult option few craftsmen understood or practiced. But all cars I had ever been around were metal-- why? Because at the scale of production of Ford and GM and Chrysler, they could invest in production costs like creating diework and stamping for a particular model of car... and the metal was a superior material for the characteristics of the product they were trying (at the time) to achieve; one that sold in hundreds of thousands of units a year.
Times have changed. A friend has a Saturn, and was proudly showing me the impact-resistance of his all-plastic door-panels. Meanwhile, a shop down the street has some interesting fabrication tools: a couple of "water-piks" that can cut huge sheets of metal and one can even form them AS IF the metal were stamped on a huge press. They can do this by computer, MEANING the setup costs of a job are no longer in expensive custom dies and forms-- a computer draftsman makes a 3-D "warping" of a sheet on the screen (the computer knows the rules about what it can do), and the machines make it happen. My jalopy-making neighbor would be dying to get hold of this...
This KIND of innovation is set to turn the "economies of scale" arguments on their heads. A trip to Fujitsu made me salivate over the already-real prospect of a "custom" chip (made from standard libraries of incredible circuits)-- the kind of chip that only a IBM or a HP could have made for themselves a few years ago. But they'll make me one, or a hundred, or a million, to MY specification, because they are set up to do just that!!! Lessee, I need that ARM CPU core, and that Non-Volatile memory over there, and let's have some of this interface circuitry on the side... A cafeteria from which, I believe, small organizations and big ones BOTH gain the "economy of scale".
As these things happen, companies like HP have, ironically, overwhelmingly turned themselves over to the "mass-market" camp. They cannot indulge any longer in products meant for a few professionals. Many of HP's earlier products, including things like the 35, were initially "concept proving-grounds": meant to extend the company's prowess and develop markets for technologies HP already owned. Sating the curiosities of creative and innovative engineers is all very well; but nowadays revenue, stock value and market-share trump all. And those who grew up in the world of business and marketing are absolutely convinced: the secret to success lies ultimately in seeking the largest possible numbers of products sold, and maximizing the return, wherever that philosophy may take you.
So in this era, a few lawyers mining your "intellectual property" make more money for you than a few engineers doing intellectualizing in the first place. And products which have no PROVEN mass appeal are to be avoided like death, while hitching your star to a developed mass (Barbie printer, need I say more?) is a high corporate ideal.
A calculator with Mass-Appeal has been all HP have really been interested in developing over the last decade. It is my opinion that ACO was getting closer to that goal, but farther afield of its perceived "turf". <<Why develop a math-teaching tool, that is too obscure and limited a market; focus instead on something Kids will like; WHAT! not a youth-PDA that will outdo (and maybe undercut the sales of) our "proven market" Windows machines!!!>> And so ACO had to go.
But we are not a mass-market, we calc users. Which is why we react so strongly to mass-market driven decisions like AOS and koolaid color-schemes. We would love the cheap tool, IF it still held the same utility as those HP calcs we fell for many years ago; we are happy if HP makes things that are both useful and popular. But what we would find MOST useful would, at least for now, cost too much to have a broad audience. In current HP eyes, that doesn't make sense. So they won't make it. Given their needs, blaming them does not make much sense.
So, is there a place for a limited-market approach? We should not look to HP to have a go at it; they won't.
A 42-style RPN programmable calc that easily fits in your hand and offers the advantages of over a decade of technical advance-- it could be done. The question many WANT to ask at this point is: but would it even sell to the limited market it was intended for? But there is no "pat" answer. The questions of user cost are important; but if it was sufficiently useful and WORTH the cost, and that worth were provable to them, I feel it might be worth the gamble.
I have no laptop computer, because I am not "on the go" like the average laptop user. I can't afford a >$1000 toy. But many people with less expendable income than I, DO have laptops instead of or in addition to a desk computer. They have spent the grand or more because they can justify the expense on the basis of their mobile productivity. It has WORTH they personally quantify before they spring for the Pavilion or Thinkpad or Presario or Tecra or Vaio... and laptops, once a conspicuous luxury or a tool only for professional executive types, reach down to anyone who can see the worth of having their computer on the train or at the beach.
ANY product, to catch the market it is intended for, must justify its expense to the user. Could a merely fancy calc do it?
In some respects, I see limits... but a marketer might ask: what is the upper limit you would pay for a calc? And most folk today would answer: oh, about a hundred for a really GOOD calc. And the marketer ends at that. The user, who knows where he can get a selection of calcs for under $100, has echoed the current market back to the marketer. But if what we are talking about is a significantly useful calc that makes other competition look lowly, then all bets are off.
It happened before, to me; twice. That's how, in years when money was even MORE dear, I came to buy HP products that were substantially higher priced than anything else at the college bookstore.
I don't own an Aston Martin; I don't have Rolexes stuffing my bedside-drawer; I like high-end audio but mostly listen to my clock-radio (a Magnavox). But I have some HP calculators, and if my priorities are out of step compared with the mass-market, it maybe explains why I still believe in that which was "HP magic".
That 42SW??? IF: it had a bright and readable multi-line display, a high-speed interface for a new generation of data-gathering peripherals, a SmartCard slot, and all the usual 42s functionality; with good keys, layout and durability of the kind we remember...
Yeah, I might squirm a bit, might look for faults to disqualify it, but ultimately I might pay $350 for it. That's a lot of bread. That's MORE than I'd pay for a PDA. And I'm not talking collector's item, but new tool. Not Precious, but Worthy. But that info would absolutely blow a few marketer's minds, now wouldn't it?
;-D