Re: Prognosticating about HP's future plans Message #3 Posted by Manatee on 11 June 2008, 10:37 a.m., in response to message #1 by Martin Pinckney
I'm rather puzzled too. I think most serious finance people who would use these calculators would never touch the Solver. They just want the TVM, bond, deprectiation, etc. functions they need. From Gene's review, the 20B sounds like the superior product. The 17 seems to have lesser financial capability built in, but it has an alarm clock and IR printing -- which I doubt many finance professionals would use.
As for the physical design, I like both the 35S/17BII+ style and this new style, but I much prefer the old hard shiny plastic keys and shift keys that are solid blue/orange. I use my 12C (made in U.S.A.!!) for finance, and my 42S for other stuff.
Unfortunately, my mind-set is from the days when calculators were expensive, treasured possessions, and they were all the computing power we owned. Now they are marginal subsets of other products (PCs, PDAs, smart-phones) and are made to be disposable.
Edited: 11 June 2008, 10:38 a.m.
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