Does anyone when the true release date of the 50g is? It was 6/30 per hpcalc.org and July/August per Wikilopeida. However, www.hp.com does not have any info.

I misplaced the 49g+ (the GOOD one), and instead of replacing it with another 49g+, I'd figure to wait for a 50g (essentially a 49g+ with a better keyboard and more ports)

Hi,

from a dealer in Germany (www.dynatech.de ) I've got the information that September 2006 would be the release date.

Hope this helps

Regards

Karl

As has often been said before:

a) Anyone who really knows the release date cannot tell you because they would be violating some sort of non-disclosure agreement.

and

b) Anyone who tells you a release date is either in trouble (see a above), or pulling your leg.

I don't know of any time when HP had some sort of new product coming where they announced it to the world weeks/months ahead of time. Sorta bad business sense, dont' you think, to hit sales of existing products with rumors of new ones? Do a quick google about the Osborne computer fiasco, where he ruined his company doing just that.

:-)

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Sorta bad business sense, dont' you think, to hit sales of existing products with rumors of new ones?

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MS?

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MS?

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A special case. When they pre-announce a product, it often has the effect of killing the competitor's sales. I have my theories as to why that is, and they don't include "because MS products are so much better." 8)

Regards,
Howard

Automobiles?

Cars also are a special case.

There are new models every year.
They may also try to keep customers from buying competitors models.

I'd also include the HP-49G+ because you can't ruin sales on this model as they're simply not there compared to TI-89. So it could be a good idea to announce the hp-50g before everybody looses faith in HP and go to the competitor. I mean honestly I can't believe that they tried for 3 years to improve the keyboard - no success. The Chinese should have simply copied the HP-48 keyboard. Not that I'd really find the TI keyboard good but at least it does its job. Well I sort of have lost faith in HP anyway as the software development doesn't seem to go on either. It's quite hard to watch someone becoming a total looser. They've basically lost all the in-house knowledge in this particular field.

Hmmm, then how come we get told when a movie or some music CDs will be released (different industry altogether?)?

In California, relatively few vendors outside universities carry any HP products beyond the 12 Series. Could it be why they don't say because it would hurt the few sales they do have?

Anyway, I'll be using the 48SX until the 50g comes out.

Something tells me that Wayne will be using his 48GX until the cows come home...with 50G or not :-)

Gene: Again, do a google and familiarize yourself with the Osborn Computer disaster when they announced the second version. No one bought the first version.

consider again: Suppose while HP had still be selling the original HP41c for $249, they pre-announced that 2 months from now, they'd be selling the HP41CX with wi-fi access and 500MB of ram for $249.

What idiot would buy the HP41c for the same price that two months later they could get the new model? Only someone who couldn't help it.

ONLY in industries where such pre-launch sales do not seem to be as affected are any pre-announcements done (or where a company hopes that a pre-announcement might slow down a competitor's sales).

And, I wouldn't think that any pre-announcement of a graphing model would impact the HP12c sales.

I imagine that HP is not happy at the early apparent "leak" of any new machines.

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consider again: Suppose while HP had still be selling the original HP41c for $249, they pre-announced that 2 months from now, they'd be selling the HP41CX with wi-fi access and 500MB of ram for $249.

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Well, I'd buy both, of course. 8)

Are you privy to information we are not, Gene? You heard it first on MoHPC, folks! Forget the "43-S," here comes the "41-CXW!"

Regards,
Howard

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ONLY in industries where such pre-launch sales do not seem to be as affected are any pre-announcements done ..

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Or where they actually seem to help sales, such as the entertainment industry, for instance.

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.. (or where a company hopes that a pre-announcement might slow down a competitor's sales).

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As in Microsoft's case. Only there it's "threaten to bring out a competetive product, on behalf of which which you will leverage your monopoly position to attempt to ensure any competitor's offering will be buried."

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I imagine that HP is not happy at the early apparent "leak" of any new machines.

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That may be so. Assuming that 49G+ sales are measurable in the first place, then a drop might be attributed to this leak. But weren't there similar leaks for the 49G?

Regards,
Howard

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I don't know of any time when HP had some sort of new product coming where they announced it to the world weeks/months ahead of time.

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HP-320LX and HP-360LX come to mind.

And where are they now?

Gene,

I am not getting the impression that the HP-50G is a TI Nspire killer. My impression is that the 50G is a small improvement on th 49G+ and not some quantum leap in technology. If I am wrong, I will be most happy to eat my words! Will I buy at least one 50G? For sure! In my case I have bought all the 49G+ that I will buy.

Namir

But HP must have thought there were strategic reasons to announce them early. Perhaps to hold people off from buying some other palmtop.

But the basic point is that expecting to get information in advance about a non-yet-announced prodct is fairly pointless.

As I said before:

Anyone who knows can't tell you.

and

Anyone who tells you is either headed for trouble or pulling your leg.

:-)
Gene

The 49g+ showing up in my university bookstore a few weeks into the semester. I picked one up, only to notice a key was ajar (partially popped out).

I'm sure I speak for most of us here when I say that I'd check out a new HP calc even during *finals week*...but, to capture the university crowd I'd have those machines on the shelves as soon as the course text lists are posted.

I now tend to lean toward the two boundaries of my toolkit: Pencil/Paper or MATLAB. The 33s is the only one I drag around (when I have to). It is useful and entertaining to maintain a certain level of mental processing capability.

ECL

Osborne not only lost its their current business (being the early 1980s) but future customers. No wonder I never heard of Osborne Computers. Boasting about a product and then failing to deliver on top of that is a sure fire way to become bankrupt.

Thanks for the lesson, Gene.

Eddie

Not that it really matters, but here is some info from a 1979 Texas Instruments Supply Company catalog that I pulled out of the local trash bin the other day:

Page 2: TI-99/4 Home Computer "AVAILABLE IN NOVEMBER"

Page 3: Electronic Digital Thermostat "AVAILABLE IN NOVEMBER"

Much later pages:

Business Card(tm) calculator "AVAILABLE IN DECEMBER"

Slimline TI-35(tm) calculator "AVAILABLE IN DECEMBER"

Super Stumpers(tm) Grades 4-5-6 for Speak & Spell(tm) "AVAILABLE IN OCTOBER"

Super Stumpers(tm) Grades 7-8 for Speak & Spell(tm) "AVAILABLE IN NOVEMBER"

Yeah, and all of these are asterisked to note in fine print "Current estimated manufacturers availability in limited quantities."

Again, not that it really matters, but calculator release dates used to be announced in advance. If I were in charge, I wouldn't do it that way these days for the reasons Gene has pretty clearly pointed out.

ObHPCalc -- The only way I would buy an HP-xxx whatever is if they gave it to me. I have a 49G+ that is very nice but too big and too cumbersome to do simple calculations, which is what I usually want a calculator to do for me.

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then how come we get told when a movie or some music CDs will be released

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Because movie DVDs (or tapes) and music CDs aren't generally fungible. If you're told that the DVD of The Seven Samurai is going to be released on August 18, it isn't expected to much influence your decision as to whether to buy the DVD of Casablanca today.

Whereas if you get told that a new improved calculator will be released on August 18, that might well prevent you from buying a calculator today.

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Page 2: TI-99/4 Home Computer "AVAILABLE IN NOVEMBER"

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But that announcement wasn't likely to prevent customers from buying a different TI product before November. It might have prevented a customer from buying some other brand of home computer, if they had reason to believe that the TI-99/4 would better meet their needs or generally be a better value; that would obviously have been in TI's interest, so it made perfect sense to preannounce it.

Of all your TI examples, I think the only one that might have had some potential to cut into their current sales was the slimline TI-35.

Note that they weren't preannouncing any high-end calculators. People that need a high end calculator might wait for a better one. People that just buy any calculator off a hang tag aren't going to much care about whether a slightly better model is due out in a few months.

Yep... and my 41-CX and my 16C.

Hi Wayne. Good catch (I knew you would eventually :-)

Fungible is one of those great words that accountants and money guys use in a feeble attempt to scare the engineers into submission ;-)

Actually I think already-purchased calculators are less fungible than CDs and that is the problem: The new calculator (whatever model) is worth twice what the used one is, and *more importantly* nobody will trade it for a new one--they are not equivalent.

On the other hand, that new CD will trade for another CD and vice versa--as long as you have watched it, you are happy to part with it for an in-kind exchange.

Whether or not a firm goes bankrupt after a bad product release depends on the resources of the company. No calculator company did it worse than TI with the TI-88. The pre-release hype included a picture of the device with the alphanumeric message "MAY I HELP YOU?" in the display. One disgruntled potential customer responded by distributing a picture with the message changed to "I DO NOT EXIST!" TI's calculator product line more than recovered from that fiasco by deciding to essentially abandon the engineering market and focus on the educational market.

An interesting pre-release ploy was used by Casio in the mid 1980's. I was working at Honeywell in St. Petersburg at the time and received an offer to purchase an fx-7000G at an introductory offer price direct from the company before the device was available in the stores. I bought one. I showed it to another engineer whose name also happened to begin with H. He had also received the offer and decided to buy. As I showed the device to others it eventually became evident that Casio had sent the offer to every person in the facility telephone book whose last name began with H. Many of the offers had been thrown away so the demand for the device quickly outstripped the number of offers which could be located. One individual called Casio, got permission to order more than one fx-7000G under the offer and in a short time submitted an order for something like forty or fifty calculators.

See http://h30091.www3.hp.com/produtos/calculadoras/50g.html in Brazil the arrival of hp50 it was already announced. it is the end of hp49g+

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... They've basically lost all the in-house knowledge in this particular field.

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They are not the same house that originally established that old knowledge... and unfortunately, even if they are, manufacturing and economics probably would have forced them to produce perhaps only a slightly better set of calculators than they have just done.