HP is not sleeping, it's dying ... Message #4 Posted by Ex-PPC member on 8 Feb 2002, 8:26 a.m., in response to message #1 by Marx Pio
... and that's nothing new, it's been agonizing since
long. Some calc-related symptoms ? Let's see:
- spiral manuals, in several colours, replaced with
monocromatic or two-colour hardbounded ones
- big, informative manuals, filled with excellent,
good-humored examples replaced with thin, terse,
dry ones, filled up with big amounts of blank space
and little information
- solidly built, last-for-always calc bodies replaced
with feeble, readily worn out plastic ones
- easy to open calculators, which you could even alter
or expand yourself (i.e. add more memory or a switch)
replaced with unopenable ones, very difficult to
modify at all
- molded, permanent keys replaced with painted ones,
even several times painted over
- classic lines and colours, replaced with garish ones
- quality production in USA and Singapore replaced with
Indonesia, Malaysia, and worst of all, China
- full functionality for engineers (i.e: infrarred
communications) cut down to suit students and their
restrictive environments (i.e: copying in exams)
- excellent designs badly crippled, i.e: 42S's IR
input supressed, impossible to read in your 41C
programs though the machine was internallty designed
to accept them directly without translation.
Synthetics disabled, CPU speed reduced and software
remedies thwarted.
- useful publications, such as "HP Keynotes" or services,
such as "HP User's Library" deleted
and I could go on, and on, and on ... enough.
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