Re: Technology missing in calculators Message #11 Posted by Bill Wiese on 7 Sept 2005, 6:16 p.m., in response to message #9 by Holger Veit
Quote:
This seems to work for mobile phones and PDAs, though, and no such fuss is made about battery life or requirements of complex chips and software support there.
A totally different pricing and distribution model makes the difference.
Support - that's handled by the phone carrier. At least in USA, phone manufacturer's customers are NOT the end-user but the cellphone carriers. When you have a phone problem you're often referred to your carrier as 1st line of support.
A phone is a $200-$300 device, even if you don't pay it directly. In USA (Europe/elsewhere may be different) you often get a 'free' or 'cheap' ($50) phone but have to keep service w/carrier for 2 years or you have to return phone or pay a service charge of several hundred dollars to terminate service (to recoup cost of 'free' phone).
Plus, you charge your phone every few days or even more often than that. The relative power budget for the display as opposed to the transmitter power amplifier and radio DSP allows some leeway there. And the color backlit LCDs DO have more drain than monochrome LCDs and battery life is less than roughly equivalent generation phones w/simpler LCD display - though that is narrowing a bit. (My next cellphone will NOT have a color display!)
By contrast, most people are accustomed to their calculator always being there and up & running without charging or worrying about batteries. Otherwise, LED calcs would still be on the market: 7-segment LED display sticks are cheaper than LCDs and zebra connectors. ;)
And a $35 calc can't afford to be sold expecting a 1 in 5 chance that customers will call an 800# with detailed tech questions requiring 10 minutes of a customer rep's time. The profit has just walked away if that's happened.
Bill Wiese
San Jose CA USA
Given that PDAs, and to some degree also "universal mobile phone+PDA+MP3player+gameboy+videoviewer", may be considered an evolutional successor of plain calculators, the observation is:
* you have all these features in such a handheld device nowadays
* it does no longer make sense to produce a high-quality calculation-only tool, except as a cheap throwaway gadget - you get more features with a "communicator"
* PDAs normally don't reach the calculation features found in older HP and TI calculators, except with additional software which is often work of hobbyist calculator enthusiasts (like HP41 emulators etc.): this make be believe that there is no longer a real interest - read: market - in such complex machines at your fingertips. If you want to do mathematics, you use a full PC; for four-species arithmetic with a single "M"emory, even the lousiest mobile phone has a program built in.
Regards
Holger
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