Comments on: HP reincarnates calculators on iPhone, Windows

Hewlett-Packard has given new life to its calculator history through applications for the iPhone and Windows. They're practical, but not cheap.

[superant]

I think you may have meant calculators instead of cameras in your fifth paragraph. Or maybe it was just to see if people were paying attention. Good Job!

[natalieweinstein]

Yes, we caught that too and fixed it. Thanks for noting!

[Renegade Knight]

There was a 48SX (and others) Emulator for Windows CD. It did a fairly good job of emulating the HP. Except the screens of most devices were too small and the resulting compression was rather a pain. However all the functions where there and all you needed was a ROM. HP had released the ROMS to the public for various uses.

I like the idea, however I have to agree. I don't like the prices. If the screen shots are accurate. Very nice. Seems like the touch version would still be cramped for keys though.

[mistergray]

Who needs an "=" key?

[lang0502]

I've never heard of an HP calculator. A TI graphing calculator would be useful for high school and college students though.

[Random_Walk]

"I've never heard of an HP calculator."

Bet you never had to use a slide-rule, either... ;)

[rrod182]

Silly kids.

[seven7dust]

there's already quite a lot of advanced calculators actually
but nothing as robust as a TI
maybe in the future

[Dani210]

dude what!!??? You haven't heard of RPN? I have 2 of these HP calculators and i had a rpn app on palm, which wasn't very good unfortunately. But this really is better than the equal sign, and some of the hp calculators you could load memory into and program it. you could make sounds and everything. the one i have that's really nice is the HP 41CX. yah those things are really high quality and legit

[patwik]

that's sooo cute!

[zmnatz]

I got the 15C sitting in my desk as we speak. Never realized they were so expensive. Maybe I should sell the thing. It's in mint condition

[Chas_IC]

I'm glad to see another original HP-35 owner like me also rushed to look and see if our old machine was available as an emulator. But unlike you, who got yours from your grandfather, I bought mine new the month it was released, replacing a recently purchased (and expensive) Dietzgen slide rule. My HP-35 died long ago, but I still use my slide rule occasionally.
Hmm.. that gives me an idea for an iPhone app.. I think I'll write a Dietzgen slide rule emulator.

[Shankland]

Actually, with multitouch on the iPhone, that could be kind of fun. Though I wouldn't price it too high. :)

[snowmans]

Great looking apps. I have my 42s sitting on my desk and I grab it every few days. I don't use even a fraction of the functions, but I have been using it for 20 years and expect to keep doing so for years to come. If I am in someone else's office and grab their calculator for something, I just end up putting it down to go get mine then come back; I just don't know what to do with that equals key.

[codynews]

I'm not a calculator nerd, but does this do more than the iphone calculator will do in sideways scientific mode?

Cody

[urr_quasdim]

It definitely will! It's not so much the "=" sign that RPN gets rid of; it's abolishing parentheses that I've found to be the greatest contribution of RPN over the regular approach. For example: if you divide the sum of A+B by C, all you have to do, using RPN, is A, enter, B, +, C, / and you're done. Try the same thing on a non-RPN calculator and you end up with A+B/C which is clearly the wrong answer; one must remember to do (A+B)/C to get it right - but that's artificial since we would never put parentheses around A+B when writing this down on paper!

[Zoobie]

I was introduced to the 12c about 5 years ago, and quickly learned to love the reverse Polish notation. When I pick up someone else's calculator, I also am confused about that darn "=" key. Great calculators and the app looks very nice. I'm not going to give up my HP though, because nothing else has the nice, solid button click.

[best4less]

I bet HP will make more money by lowering the price to $9.99 apiece.

[Shankland]

HP's pricing baffles me a bit. I think HP is comparing to real-world calculator prices. That signals to me that they're catering to their limited though loyal installed base. I think they might do better with lower pricing that recognizes there are innumerable alternatives. That might get the app out there beyond the sort of people who already are converts.

[jakebala]

my work gives out 12c's to all employees. i'm 22 yrs old too. use the hp 12c everyday. and the reverse polish is retarded, i have no idea why someone would program a calculator like that.

sometimes it does amaze me how much faster i can go in certain situations, but the calculator will make u use your brain to figure out what sequence to press the numbers to do the expression u want. it's just easier to do it in excel or a regular calculator tho.

[Shankland]

Perhaps it's a native language issue. Germans have no trouble expressing themselves with a language that back-loads the verbs in sentences and clauses in some circumstances, but foreigners can struggle to learn those rules. I learned calculator math on an RPN calculator and it came quite naturally to me to do long calculations, but when I tried to use an algebraic Texas Instruments calculator once for something complex I was mystified and fumbled around trying to figure out the parenthesis and such.

[mbenedict]

@jakebala:

Computationally, a series of calculations can be efficiently represented on a stack -- and RPN (postfix) is the most straightforward way to manipulate the stack -- which is why the original HP calculators were programmed in that way.

Basically RPN allows you to "get rid" of parenthesis while maintaining order precedence. Also, having a stack, users don't have to constantly fiddle with adding/recalling/clearing from a single memory space like on "regular" calculators (which is prone to user error).

Consider even the simple expression: (6 + 7) / (8 + 9). With a regular calculator, you'd have to clear the memory (MC), compute 8 + 9 =, store it in memory (M+), compute 6 + 7 =, hit the divide key, recall the stored value (MR), then hit =. That's if they remember to calculate (8 + 9) first, so they could recall it last.

Or do what most people do, which is to write down a partial calculation (6 x 7) on paper, do the same with (8 x 9), then retype both results back in to calculate the division for the final answer. As you can see the parenthesis makes regular calculators hard to use.

On the HP you just do 6 e 7 + e 8 e 9 + / and you're done (with 'e' being the Enter key).

[mbenedict]

Sorry meant 6 e 7 + 8 e 9 + / in the RPN example (had an extra 'enter' key above which doesn't matter).

[rzachol5]

I've got 12C on my desk - and I love it. Perhaps it is a bit patriotic (because I am as Polish as the RPN :-), but the real advantage is that nobody tries to borrow it for a while and then leave it somewhere in the office, as people don't know how to use it. I also use an emulator for the iPhone from a company called R.L.M. Software - and the lite version costed me something like ?4 from the iTunes Store (the "lite" version is not programmable - but it still looks like the real thing on the screen).

[mbenedict]

Lol... maybe you're actually un-patriotic? The "R" stands for "Reverse", you know, as in "let's not do things the Polish way" ;-)

(I'm curious if there were ever any Polish notation calculators, i.e., with a prefix method of input).

[praveen307]

Its good until the moment arrives when u hav to appear for an exam. Everything except the physical calculators are barred from being taken into the exam hall.

[Sausagebiscuit]

I have been using a HP 32S II RPN only calculator at work (Steel Fabshop) and it sure is a learning process, however it really isn't that hard. I had no RPN knowledge and picked it up right away. I still get trapped up sometimes looking for the = key, however.

Prices are high, but still less than buying a new one (or ebay as article says).

[Dani210]

dude i have that calculator!! but for some reason, the trig functions are a little inaccurate. idk if its just my calculator or the whole series but yeah, i compare it to other calculators and while they are all the same, this one's off by a lil. and no, i didn't forget to change it from radian to degrees or vise versa, this calculator is a lil off

[Brian06840]

I've had my HP 12C since 1979! Yes, I'm not a youngster. :) It's a GREAT calculator.

There are multiple HP 12C type calculators on the app store already. HP is late to the game. Don't think I'll be buying HP's version...

[iptofar]

I'd wish for a 41CX emulator. It's worth more now than when i bought it for 225 too many years ago. Back before you could bring a laptop into a test, it was the fastest pounder that you could have.

TIs: I wore out three or four of them before the hp. They lasted less than a year. The hp is still going strong.

[fumor]

Look for i41CX in the app store. Not from HP, not cheap but feels like the real thing.

[donDC]

I bought the i41CX app for my Touch and now iPhone a while back and have been really happy with it. It's 8 bucks for the standard version and 15 for the printer version, and you can FTP or email programs in plain text to and from it. All the old ROMS are freely available for "plugging in," so I have my Advantage ROM in both my real and iPhone HP41s. They just added some new functions to it that access the iPhone's built-in accelerometers and Location info.

I had an emulator on my old Treo, but this new one really blows it away.

I just bought more N-cells for my HP41 CX. That calculator just keeps on working and working. It's still by far my favorite calculator ever, graphing or otherwise. My original HP41C (with a quad memory module) broke after I dropped it for the millionth time. I used the heck out of it in my EE work.

[sciontcya]

I love RPN HP calc's, but $30?
No HP, NO!
Drop the price and I'm in.

[Mergatroid Mania]

HP has always been such a rip off. They won't help you on the phone with an out-of-warranty problem without uttering the phrase "Can I have your credit card number?" when other companies like Brother give free tech support even out-of-warranty.
Don't get me wrong, HP makes good hardware, but their prices are a little out of line. This article just proves it. At the prices they're asking for these software calculators you can actually buy a similar hardware calculator.

Plus, you can get software scientific and accounting calculators for PC and Windows Mobile for free.

What a rip-off.

[globalist_agenda]

I have an HP 10B made in 1987. A thing of beauty, it proudly says "Made in USA". Silicon Valley was hopping in those days. You could feel the buzz. Those were happier times for America, before we outsourced everything to China and became hoplessly trillions in debt.

[Shankland]

Silicon Valley has proved fairly resilient; it's changed, to be sure, but it still has some significant buzz even as it outsources some manufacturing to Taiwan, China, Singapore, and elsewhere, and some programming to India and China.

[k9jdk]

There are some that say that HP = High Priced