Hello, Bill;
although I'd like to think of people needing computing tools like the HP15C, HP16C and the like, I must admit that I no longer "dream" of it. Today's needings in most cases are beyond calculators abilities, and current computing devices show amazing resources.
OK, ok, don't throw stones on me, folks, please! (I hope this is the correct construction, so I'll deserve it only once...;) I own about 40 calculators and I'd never trade any of them for these new gadgets. I'm still reading manuals and learning how to use some earlier models "in deep" (HP71B, HP75D), mostly because I like reading those manuals: good reading, conciseness, care for the reader and user... These are not found in the new manuals and guides.
So I look the new PDA's and palms and see nothing but consuming products, graphic O.S. oriented "driven" by non-tech (and don't wannabe) users that simply touch their palms screens with a small stylus and see what's going on around the world without leaving their seats. What to do? That's today's needings, and Compaq, HP and others are keeping track with these consumers. I'm not one of them, but surely there are thousands of them that actually do not even know about us, Dave Hicks, the MoHPC and this Forum. Unless we are a great market opportunity... 300,000 units of HP15C's to be sold here? Yeah, maybe they "hear" us.
I'd like to be more "positive" about this, but I see no other way than going the deepest possible into the existing "live" units and try a "reversed-engineering", custom development. What amuses me is the fact that most of us (I include myself) are trying to create with today available technology what HP had already achieved ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. And in some cases, wee still need to sweat and get hard work to achieve.
That's technology. Amazing technology. and many of us understand what does it mean. In fact, this is the issue here. The calculators are, in fact, the materialization of a whole process where brain activity and brainy guys are the actual master pieces. And the calculators are what we have in order to preserve their memories, and we don't actually want these memories to be lost.
Cheers.
Luiz (Brazil)
Edited: 5 June 2004, 2:59 a.m.