HP30b design choices

[David Griffith]

I just now got my HP30b for later transformation in a WP34s. Flipping through the manual I found something that made me wonder about what's going through HP's collective mind. That thing is a transparent overlay sticker. Why did HP choose to do that instead of printing the legends on the case of the calculator itself?

[Tim Wessman]

1) The "printing on the case" is actually a foil film that is printed and embedded below the surface of the plastic during injection molding. The lead time on that was very, very long and needed to happen much earlier then the software was able to be finalized (due to #2).

2) The programming was still not yet finished as the beta testers kept pressing to add more features and turn it from a simple "macro recording" as originally envisioned, into a full fledged programming language. We, being advanced users, were more then happy to do that.

3) There was concern about making the device seem cluttered as the vast majority of users would never touch the programming capability. Hence #1 and #2 were not really a concern.

TW

Edited: 13 Feb 2012, 6:45 p.m.