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I don't understand why HP calculator do not have color screen ? Any help?
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But they do; until the late 70's: They were all red.
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You joking!!! I mean full colors. Like our mobile phone. If the HP calculators is color. I think it will increase the sales.
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Quote:
I don't understand why HP calculator do not have color screen ?
Battery life. A higher resolution screen would be a better feature, I think.
Regards,
Gerson.
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Agree! Can they go Li-polymer ?
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We are talking about calculators; they're supposed to be small...
... as in little silver (or horrors! mercury) button cells.
Are there small lithium batteries??
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Just like our cell phone or PDA.
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Battery life is a real issue. I have, for example, a really fine Dell Axim X51v PDA with a brilliant screen, but it does not run for more than three hours on a Li-polymer battery charge. For a calculator this would be really inconvenient, it would not even take you through an exam or an entire working day.
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what if it wasn't backlit, a bit like the gameboy?
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Quote:
We are talking about calculators; they're supposed to be small...
... as in little silver (or horrors! mercury) button cells.
Are there small lithium batteries??
If calculators are supposed to be small then why isn't there a really SMALL scientific calculator on the market?
I don't even consider the 15C et.al small, I've been looking for something smaller for a long time.
Bring back the Casio CFX-400 scientific calculator watch I say, that's SMALL.
Yes, there are plenty of small lithium button cell batteries available, the 16xx and 20xx series et.al being the most popular.
Dave.
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Really? What were the dimensions of the Casio CFX-400?
I have a Casio fx-4200p and I'll admit it's about a 3/8" shorter than a HP-32SII and roughly averages about three quarters as thin...
... but it has a significantly smaller screen area, which is not a step in the right direction. I do like the fx-4200p's size though, even if I'd prefer if it'd get a little longer and slightly thicker to accomodate a more comfortably viewable screen.
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Quote:
Really? What were the dimensions of the Casio CFX-400?
I have a Casio fx-4200p and I'll admit it's about a 3/8" shorter than a HP-32SII and roughly averages about three quarters as thin...
... but it has a significantly smaller screen area, which is not a step in the right direction. I do like the fx-4200p's size though, even if I'd prefer if it'd get a little longer and slightly thicker to accomodate a more comfortably viewable screen.
The CFX-400 is a watch, it fits on your wrist, with full scientific functions including base conversion.
Dave.
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Ah, ha ha ha! I see.
I think I prefer something with bigger buttons and screens for my hammy digits and suboptimal eyes.
Today's normal Casios, HPs, etc. are really fine in terms of size and form.
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Quote:
I don't understand why HP calculator do not have color screen ? Any help?
Cost. The mass market for calculators is the mid to low end--students with limited budgets, standardized exams, home/office use.
Power. TFT backlit screens use more power. Higher resolution screens also use more power. I have to charge my notebook, PDA, and phone frequently.
There are a number of new high resolution, color, low power display technologies under development. Eventually newer technologies will replace B/W low res LCD.
If you want a color, high function, high resolution calculator consider getting a PDA and using native and emulator applications.
E.g. I have a Zaurus c860. It has a QWERTY keyboard and a VGA color screen and runs Linux.
And, it is the same size as the 15C.
You can find more screen shots here:
http://sense.net/zc/nonpareil/
http://sense.net/zc/free42/
http://sense.net/zc/x48/
The above provides most of the classic calcs (15C, 41CX, 34C, etc...), 42S, and 48GX. I recently started using EMU71 under Dosbox on the Zaurus as well.
This site has a good collection of open source scientific/math apps for the Zaurus (e.g. Scilab, Octave, R, and more):
http://yonggun.googlepages.com/scientificpdaxrom
The Zaurus cSeries is EOL. The price varied for new units somewhere around $400-$600.
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You know, I have the 48G, 48G+, 49G+, 34C, 32SII, 20S, and 33S...
... and I prefer to reach for the 34C (until it got old and dotty; otherwise my favorite), 32SII (still; 20S is algebraic, so I use if only as last resort), and 33S (increasingly so) rather than the 48 or 49 models because of their small(er) form factor... rather, OPTIMAL form factor. I go for the 48G or G+ or 49G+ only if I need their power or more capacious programmability.
The less bells and whistles the better if just to keep it small enough to hold in my hand and see and use most easily. So, color or higher resolution screens, speakers, microphones, and the attendant bigger batteries I wouldn't want to see in a practical day to day (or so) use calculator.
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Wow!
I should look into getting a Zaurus. My Palm XT is getting some screen failure after a spill, and it looks like there are so many different emulators that can run on the Zaurus. Indeed, the excellent Nonpareil does not yet have a PalmOS version, yet it has had a Zaurus version for awhile.
I really love Free42 on the Palm but I really wish I had other emulators in my handheld beside it, Power48, and P41CX that is sorely in need of an upgrade. Looks like there is more stuff available for the Zaurus.
Les
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I should look into getting a Zaurus.
I was a Palm user for a long time (almost from the beginning), but when my 2nd Vx was starting to fail (battery) I decided to try something new. I opted for the Zaurus 5500 and then later the c860. The Zaurus gave me increased levels of flexibility. I could do anything, BUT, get to meetings on time, take notes, look up contacts, or get it to sync properly and reliability with my notebook. The Zaurus is a crappy PDA. The Zaurus is more of a hobby and if you try to use it as a PDA (IMHO) you will lose productivity. (I feel the same about trying to use the 48GX as a PDA too).
I use my Windows Smartphone for my PDA and my Zaurus for advanced functions (emulators, movies, firefox, perl programming, ssh, other Linux only apps, etc...). It's more like a mini notebook that I can slip in my pocket when dragging my ThinkPad around would be inconvenient.
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I have never wanted color on my HPs, and the extra power would definitely keep me from buying one with color. If you're marketing to technical professionals, you don't need it. If you're marketting to a bunch of giggling junior-high cheerleaders at the counter at WalMart, then go for it.
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Heeheehee...
... gigglegigglegiggle...
... ... haw haw haw!!!
A little brutal, but very funny way to put it!!
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Especially if the calculator has nothing but pastel colors.
Now, colored graphs on 39/48 series would be nice, but not necessary.
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So far, numbers are B/W, aren't they?
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There is a, what, condition? ability? gift?... that some people have which allows them to make unusual associations mentally, like the "color" of a number, or the smell of a sound, or some such ordinarily unthought of connections... synesthesia, I believe it's called?
I guess there may be a small market for practical calcs with color screens... ;)
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There was a young man with that ability on "60 Minutes" recently. He didn't need a calculator. I wonder if a running program in his incredible mind looked something like a fractals screensaver.
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All the genuine replies here are great, in that they are informative. However, I agree that Fok is playing the "why...why...why" game. For example:
Quote:
Can they go li-poly?
(or lithium, I forget)...
What could an intelligent person possibly hope to gain from asking such a question? Perhaps Fok would also like to know about the feasibility of a Cam-Calc. Could they go 5 Mega-pixel?? The answer to all such questions is Yes. "They" can do what ever "they" want! Oh..I could rant at length on this, but instead I'll comment positively on the 6x6 matrix solver (got it here....was is Palmer?) that I just finished punching in on my 33s: Cool! I launched an engineering program that I have on my laptop which, at one point, inverts a 6x6 matrix to determine stress and moment resultants on laminated structural plates. I was very happy to find that it gave very very similar results. The 33s program doesn't utilize pivoting, so I found that it is necessary to pre-condition the system before entering it (row-swapping, column swapping to create a diagonally-dominant system).
There. So...can they go 10x10 on that matrix solver? :) (joke)
ECL
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So...can they go 10x10 on that matrix solver? :) (joke)
ECL
No joke -- if you look at Article 678 you will see that I was able to go to 8x8 with some changes to the solver.
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From the standpoint of design, perhaps the question should be, "If there was no difference in battery life or readability of the screen, would you use a color display"
This would help us see what a color display could offer to a calculator user. Perhaps instead of a decimal point, you could configured your integer parts to be red and your decimal parts to be blue. Perhaps negative numbers would turn up as a different color.
Perhaps, instead of having a small ^ in the top of the screen, an approximated number would be a different color, or a gradient of two colors.
Perhaps, on graphs, multiple functions could be indicated by different colors. Maybe, instead of differentiating between vectors and numbers in a program, one could differentiate by color. It might add some interesting components to the programming interface as well.
So all of these are just random ideas about what color might bring to a calculator. None of them should be treated as actual suggestions. I'm actually just quite curious as to what people would use color for. There is a Casio graphing calculator with color, but I don't think they used it to its full potential.
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Hi Ben,
Quote:
From the standpoint of design, perhaps the question should be, "If there was no difference in battery life or readability of the screen, would you use a color display"
Exactly my thoughts when I read the first post.
Color must add some information to the display - otherwise it's just window dressing (or marketing hype). What kind of information would it add? You've mentioned a few and I'm sure we could come up with many more.
One main problem with color screens is that many are just plain unreadable in very bright lighting - especially outdoors.
If there was a color calculator, I'd want to be able to change the colors so they would have special meaning for my application. I'd hate to be stuck with the color scheme that most marketers (or graphic design people) think look really "cool".
The one thing that would worry me the most is - if the manufacturer has a fixed design budget, then any effort devoted to putting color in will come at the expense of the Mathemathical design of the calculator. Over the years, I have seen too many computer programs (and the calculator is just a form of a computer program) add really "neat" color graphical features to their programs while at the same time leaving in calculation errors in their programs.
About 15 years ago, I wrote an engineering program developer and informed him of a major calculation error in the program. He confirmed that the error did exist and would be fixed in the next release. Several months later, the next release arrived. It had added beautiful charts and graphs - but the error was still there. The charts and graphs did a great job of displaying the erronous results in full color. When I called him, all he could discuss was about all the color output that had been added. Having correct results didn't seem to be of very high importance since color sells.
I have had the same experience on other programs.
Conclusion - give be a great monochrome calculator that does it job correctly. Then and only then, give me color.
Bill
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Hi Bill, Ben,
Exactly what I had in mind when posting on March 26th. Thanks for laying it out.
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