Re: Last of the Topcats? Message #7 Posted by Howard Owen on 14 Aug 2005, 3:56 a.m., in response to message #6 by Vassilis Prevelakis
I agree about the 97 display. It is wonderfl to look at, and one of the best features of the machine.
I guess the relationship between the HP-71B and the HP-97 is obvious. Let's take the keyboard. The key with "5" on it is 1/2 inch wide on my 97. On my 71-B it's, well, 3/8 inches wide. But the seperation between it and the "5" key is 1/8 inch on the 71B and, um, 1/4 inch on the 97. Let's try something else, oh yes, the X<>Y key. On the 97, that's 1/2 inch wide also. On the 71B, wait a sec, oh, there is no X<>Y key on the 71B. How about the Enter key? Doggone, the 71B doesn't have one of those either. How the heck do you do number entry on the 71? Oh, algebraic mode. Yup, the 71B is a dead ringer for its lineal ancestor, the HP-97.
The two machines are about as different as any two calculators HP ever made. I haven't even started on the software side. Now, I like my HP-71B. It has the coolest architecture of any of the BASIC models I've tried. It's my principle tool for the swap disk indexing project because of its superior HP-IL implementation. But I vastly prefer the 75C to type on. The keyboard on the 71B is a (very good) compromise. I can actually go fairly quickly with two thumbs. But, I can touch type on the 75C! And for doing ten-key numeric entry, the 97 beats the 71 and the 75 hands down.
I take your point that once you have HP-IL, you don't need the integrated printer and card reader. But which came first in the transition from the 97/67 to the 41C? Did they abandon that particular small desktop calculator form factor, never to revive it, before they decided to go with a component approach or afterwards? It's clear that they decided to cover both the low-mid and middle range calculating markets with one system: the 41C. Perhaps they couldn't afford to engineer and market seperate machines as they had before. Perhaps the sales of the 97 didn't justify the expense of a seperate product line. Or perhaps they got carried away with the component/system model and threw away a good thing in the process.
Does anyone know what the thinking around that decision was?
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