What would your ideal HP calc look like now?

[Manolo Sobrino]

Yes, you can have double-shot Cherry keys, but it won't be cheap. What if the keyboard alone ends up costing 50-100$? All the technology for your dream calculator and beyond is here, the problem is big companies believe they won't sell enough 250$ not-for-school calculators, and they're right.

The current situation is something like this:

HP: I don't think their priorities are there. Numbers say Personal Systems are not doing well and they're cutting 34,000 jobs this year. The fact that they are still producing new calculators is kind of a miracle.

TI is moving to Nspire... enough said. They have just one interesting scientific calculator, the 36X Pro, not programmable.

Casio: They really only have the FX-5800P, which is a humble mishmash of features from their golden age. The rest are school oriented or cheap meant for volume (yet I have a feeling that this is a company with enough resources and crazy enough to consider such a thing at some point, it wouldn't be RPN though... and it would have "plastic keys".)

Sharp: their only programmables are Japan only, and fairly modest.

Canon: they're doing interesting things on the low cost end of scientifics, with the oddity of an expensive and limited scientific meant for its looks.

Maybe a small company can develop such a calculator, there isn't even a kickstarter project for such a thing so I guess it's unlikely.

So unless Fluke comes up with a 5k$ calculator your only shot is basically the 43S from the usual suspects and then half of the board will complain that it isn't really an HP

(BTW, most, if not all, the relevant patents have expired, but did you know that you still have to pay Kinpo for an UNDO key in a calculator http://www.google.com/patents/US20030149710? You live and learn...)