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.

[cab6v]

HP 12cs are THE calculators of real estate professionals, especially commercial brokers and appraisers. We're so used to them and they're so powerful for our work that people in our industry will snap them up at $15 a pop. Well, we would if the iPhone was a better business device and we used them insead of Blackberries and other smartphones...

[sciontcya]

Nice try...

[Huibert Aalbers]

They should have released an HP 16c emulator as well, it shared the same enclosure as the 15c but was designed for programmers.

[gdparks]

I have to AMEN this comment. I don't know why the 12C is still in production today and not the 15C, 16C or even the 10C. I still use my 15C even though it is well worn. I also still use my 41CX, 48GX and my 50G.

Emulators have been around for quite a while and I would like to see a BRAND NEW 15C Platinum and at 16C Platinum. It would really be lovely to see a retro 41CSX or something! :) (Like the Thunderbird, Mustang, Camaro, etc).

Since someone mentioned TI - there will never be any TI better than the TI-58/59 series! which I still use today!

Now since all of the hoopla is about emulators - Make one for the Blackberry Storm!

G :)

[Shankland]

I'm not privy to HP's thinking, but I suspect that some of the real estate and finance folks who use 12c calculators are less likely to live in a computer than programmers or scientists dealing with data. The former already have a computer right there in front of them, in all likelihood, and the latter will need to get their data onto a computer at some point if they want to do anything serious with it. And HP has the 35s, 50g, and other models for the scientific set.

The market for calculators is very different than two decades ago when PCs commonly cost $4,000.

[Dean_S]

You should check out "42S RPN Calculator" on iTunes. It's a port of the GNU Free42 for the iPhone/iPodTouch, and at $4.99 it's way less expensive than the HP offerings.

[afterhours]

Hmmm Iwonder if my Mac version will get ported: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27687

[SeizeCTRL]

For $29 I'd rather just get a Ti83 off eBay and then still have $20 to spend on other things. I just can't see myself spending $29 on an calculator app.

[OS11]

I've been using the 12c since 1983, now on my second set of batteries :) Over the last few years I've been using a virtual 12c on my MacBook Air... I see they now have one for the iPhone for $4.99

http://www.rlmtools.com/iPhone/12CC/Detail.html

And all the other models here:

http://www.rlmtools.com/

HP's $15 is too much :)

[vjeong]

Funny I had downloaded a HP12C emulator on my iPhone over a year ago for free, after i had jailbreak(ed) it. Now they want me to up grade to firmware version 3.0 so I can go out and buy it for $15.00 dollars... Before Apple opened the Apple store to software developers, there were hundreds of apps available for free, Check out older blogs from Zibri,

[elreteipos]

Who needs that anymore if you've got Wolfram Alpha?

[scdecade]

They'll pull my dead fingers off my HP-12C. Nothing can replace the feel of the little buttons...

[beelissa]

This article has made me think about my first calculator. I think it was made by Texas Instruments. I remember it was HUGE compared to today's models, all it did was add, suptract, multipy, divide, and square root. It has a +/- key, and it didn't have a CE key. It had a big ole wall wart. And it cost $50! This was before I got to higher math, so I didn't need or want scientific calculator functions. I was probably in 8th grade -- 1974 or 75?

What I remember most was turning it upside down and trying to spell words. 7734 was our favorite, we thought we were so cool spelling swear words in code.

[davidbankson]

Haha, you put the time as 4:20 in that screenshot!

[macewan_]

Why isn't there a link to the app?

[Shankland]

I put a link in paragraph 4, but here it is again: http://www.hp.com/buy/calculators

That has links to the Windows versions and the App Store versions for iPhone or iPod Touch.

[jdzions]

I'd pay money for a 16C emulator. The 16C was a "programmers" calculator; it could do computations in octal, hexadecimal, and binary as well fixed and floating point decimal. Admittedly, it'd need to be updated to support standard IEEE 794 floating point formats, but that's trivial.

Excel, calc.exe, and all the other pretty calculator apps don't support all the hex numbercrunching and floating point bit twiddling that the 16C handled natively. Sure wish mine still worked. :-(

[shinkat--2008]

k9jdk: I heard "HP = High Price" from HP sales person. She was demonstrating HP9825.

[escrandall]

There are many rpn calculators available for the iPhone including a very spendy 16C lookalike.

[eBob1]

I bought a 28S back when I was in college and absolutely loved that calculator once I got used to the RPN. I still had it until it was stolen last year.

[MityMayhem]

Check out http://www.hpcalc.org/ for loads of emulators and programs for HP Calculators. I've been using one to emulate my HP49 scientific calculator on windows for a couple of years. It takes some fiddling to get everything working, but once you have it all running, it works great.

[mahurshi]

It'd be nice to have a smaller version of Mathematica or Matlab as well :-)

[Altotus]

HP High price and worth every cent! No other calculator comes close. HP or TI give me HP no contest.

[tm10030]

RPN is as simple as it comes. John has 2 apples. Mary has 3 apples. How many apples do John and Mary have together? 2 enter 3 +