HP 12C Platinum - $44.95 Replacement

[Joerg Woerner]

I was just looking for the Texas Instruments BA Real Estate and found this one as an alternative:

VICTOR V12 Programmable RPN Financial Calculator

http://www.calculatorsource.com/vc-v12.html

I'm not sure if you noticed that HP-12CCC (Cheap Chinease Copy) already.

db: Your Russian Beauty is on its way!

Regards,
Joerg

[Peter A. Gebhardt]

Joerg,

For me as a former employee of Victor Technologies during their Sirius to PC transition (mid-80s last century), it's still giving me sad feelings to see what happened to one of the pioneers of the early PC days (the same holds true by the way for Commodore or Atari as well) - only the trade mark has remained and has been changing hands several times already.

But even during that time, strong connections had been established to Asian OEM manufactures including some for the calculator business.

So I would not rule out per se, that a genuine base of engineering know-how had been maintained over there.

Because of your post I've searched the web too and found the manual here:

http://www.victortech.com/admin/images/products/V12Manual_web.pdf

Best regards

Peter A. Gebhardt

Edited: 16 Jan 2008, 1:43 p.m.

[Namir]

I remember Victor Technologies as being one of the early PC companies in the early 80s. It was a very competitive market. Eventually not even Commodore survived. I remember being in Vegas in a CES show when Jack Tramiel (sp?) was launching a DOS/PC-platform version of the Commodore. That did not work, unfortunately. Even HP's touch-screen DOS/PC was not a big hit, and many loyal HP customers wondered what on earth HP was doing.

Those were the days!!!

:-)

Namir

Edited: 16 Jan 2008, 3:25 p.m.

[Joerg Woerner]

Peter,

Thanks for this link. Funny address, points directly to the "admin" area of the website.

I wasn't aware that this Victor is "The Victor" ;-))

Just browsed the webiste and found the whole story in their Museum including Sirius - boy - that was a product! Then a buy-out in 1991 and still active. Great!

Will buy soon a Victor calc and compare the building quality with other state-of-the-art products.
Sorry for my ccc comment!

Regards,
Joerg

[Norris]

I had no idea that there was such a thing as an "Antimicrobial" calculator, but Victor offers several different models with this feature:

Quote:

---

Engineered with an AntiMicrobial agent that reduces the growth of microbes and bacteria that may cause odors and discoloration.

---

[Don Shepherd]

Apparently we've gone from "fuzzy math" to "stinky math!"

[Thor Lansen]

I would like a taser version (like the new ipod), pity, they don't have one ...

[Frank Rottgardt]

Maybe for the professional gardener working all day insid a green house?

[Peter Geiser]

Let's hope that there will soon be a Victor V15, V16, etc.

Regards
Peter

[George Bailey (Bedford Falls)]

Quote:

---

Let's hope that there will soon be a Victor V15, V16, etc.

Regards
Peter

---

Let's flood their email inboxes at this URL ;-)

[Thomas Radtke]

I couldn't resist to ask them when the V15 will be out ;-).

[Walter B]

:-D

Please inform us when you receive a response.

[George Bailey (Bedford Falls)]

Quote:

---

:-D

Please inform us when you receive a response.

---

@Walter B and all,

everybody send an email of your own! They have to see the demand out there!

[hpnut]

they never replied to my enquiry! :-(

[Thomas Radtke]

The engineer I spoke to owns a 15C. Of course, there are no plans to rebuild them (yet), but I took the opportunity to point him to this thread :-).

[George Bailey (Bedford Falls)]

Quote:

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to point him to this thread :-).

---

Great!

So, dear Mr. Victor-Engineer!

Have a look at >>>Bring Back the 15C<<<, tell them that you are planning to actually bring it back and sign them all up as customers: 36840 units sold in an instant! Plus at least 2 more for me!!! ;-)

[tony (nz)]

Thanks - I had never heard of this one! It even has a dedicated URL: www.victorv12.com, with more photos. Cheers, Tony

[sjthomas]

At least it's RPN!!

[db (martinez, ca.)]

I am happy. It's only half way through january 2008 and i have two non-hp RPN calcs on the way. Thanks a google joerg.

Ya know? for a ti man; you sure are conversant in RPN. Is there a hidden side to you?

[Paul Brogger]

How close is this to the HP-12C?

   There was another manufacturer's 12C clone -- in a clamshell case,    

   with a different keyboard layout (and funky commas at the top of 

   the display line, rather than the baseline), right?  

Is this something along the same line? (I guess if you're going to copy a calculator, one may as well choose the best-seller of all time.)

I admit I haven't taken the time to look closely at the keyboard legends in the pics, nor have I memorized the 12C's details at all.

Edited: 17 Jan 2008, 5:51 p.m.

[db (martinez, ca.)]

Paul; the keytops are the same. i don't know about the shifted functions. to me; anybody making an rpn is a positive step. hp will probably be less impressed.

this is a link to an internal photo of the clamshell 12c clone. theres is another shot of the keyboard in the album.

[tony (nz)]

It looks similar to the original 12c platinum which came out 5 years ago. Will be interesting to see if it has the same bugs as mentioned in Jordi Hidalgo's article in 2003 in Datafile V22N3P8.
Cheers, Tony

[hpnut]

Hi all,

I got the follwoing response from the victortech people:

John Ringlein to Donna, me, jfoy, Carrie, gennine, valerie
show details 9:56 PM (24 minutes ago) Reply

Hello Arjunaidi,

Thank you for your interest in Victor's V12 calculator. At this time, the
product is available in the United States and Canada. We are happy to sell
the product in Malaysi, but do not have a dealer at this time. Perhaps you
can recommend one. Of course, we can also ship the product from the United
States to any customer.

The V12 was developed by Victor with no license from HP.

We have no plans for a V11, V15, or V15 at this time.

Regards,

John Ringlein
Chief Operating Officer
Victor Technology

-----Original Message-----
From: Donna Dattilo [mailto:ddattilo@victortech.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 7:08 AM
To: 'John Ringlein'
Subject: FW: V12 Programmable Financial Calculator

Please read below. This guy emailed me again and informed me that his
request is not spam (forward).
D

-----Original Message-----
From: arjunaidi jamaludin [mailto:arjunaidi@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:35 AM
To: sales@victortech.com
Subject: V12 Programmable Financial Calculator

Hello,

I found your product after a member of www.hpmuseum.org forum alerted
members of its existence.

Q1: will this product be available in Malaysia?

Q2: are your products under licence from Hewlett-Packard?

Q3: will there be Victor V11, V15 and V16 corresponding to the much loved
HP11C, HP15C and HP16C calculators?

sincerely,

Arjunaidi

(hpnut at hpmuseum forum)