What company now embodies the qualities of the HP of old?

[hecube]

And where is the chinese equivalent of HP? Where is the indian equivalent of HP? or Russia's? These countries are experiencing construction (and the associated engineering) boom.

They must have need for portable computational power like HP provided in the 70s and 80s?

Where is all that?

[Don Shepherd]

PC

[hecube]

I know... I'm a romantic... I was hoping for another answer.

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

I think it's the mobile phone, not the calculator.

[Mike T.]

Personally I'd say Apple's iPod, iPhone, and MacBook show that Apple has the qualities of Innovation, Design and 'Quality' that were associated with the older HP1x, HP2x and HP4x series machines. Perhaps surprisingly you could even make a case for HP themselves based on products like the HP digital pen and HP printing system, HP2133 netbook, and high end products like the HP2465 - except that though very good the HP products were not all the first to appear in each segment of the market.

Of course only of one of these the two still makes an RPN calculator.

Perhaps in today's consumer market place it should not be a surprise that none of these products feel quite as special as the old machines did in the '70s and '80s , but these days you do get a lot more for your money...

Mike T.