Re: To buy or not to buy..that is the conundrum Message #13 Posted by Lincoln R. on 13 Sept 2011, 10:10 a.m., in response to message #12 by Nick R
It's unfortunate, but I believe that the last American-made calculator (of any kind that i've encountered, not just HP) was the 48sx (and even those had a Japanese LCD display if you really want to split hairs). By the time it came out, TI had already outsourced most of their manufacturing to Taiwan, and most of the other North American calculator manufacturers had failed in the early 80s.
Singapore-made HPs seemed to be as good as the American ones, once things started moving to Indonesia and China quality did take a drop, but honestly the later models (12c+, 30b, etc.) seem to be better built than things like the 49g, later production Pioneers with the key labels that wear off, etc. Do they match the quality of the 80s HPs? Probably not, but if anyone could even make a calculator like that it would cost so much that only people like us would buy one, and there aren't enough of us to keep a few hundred people employed for 40 hours a week making calculators.
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