What happened between 39gii and prime?

[jlind]

(08-19-2019 07:32 AM)Marco Polo Wrote:  HI John.
Imho you explained my opinion better than me :-)

In my department lives several mid-ageengineers who, like me, use HP48 series calcs, some old dinosaurs using HP41/32/42/35s (the latter due to hardware failure of 32s) and a bunch of millennials using Excel and cheap Sharp or Casio 4-bangers.
Ti is not present, as well as modern Casio calculators.

Hi Marco,
Most of the scientists and engineers where I worked from 1985-1995 had an HP 35/45/41, one of the SR-50 family (by TI), or a TI-5x (mostly 58 or 59). Small shirt pocket scientific like the TI-30-II and HP-1x Voyager family were showing up with the HP Voyagers having some programming capability. Moved in 1995. Many of the older guys at the new job had one of those. The young ones were showing up with HP 1x family (mostly 15C), HP 41, HP 42, TI-80/82, and TI-85. Didn't see any of the HP-28x (battery door problems). Bought the TI-85 just after the move, not for the graphing but for the ability to handle stats (notably ANOVA), regression, and linear programming (simultaneous equations). The alternative was an HP 38G. Also picked up a TI-36x Solar at the same time for my shirt pocket.

By the end of the 1990's with the advent of Windows 2000 and much more powerful PC hardware, the calculator in the middle desk drawer had moved to the "catchall bin" bottom desk drawer in one of the pedestals. Still carried the TI-85 and its TI-86 successor in the brief case and on business trips. Windows XP and PC hardware architecture had completely displaced the calculator with ability to run very sophisticated and high powered math software by the mid-2000's. I was using Minitab and Excel as most of my work dealt with stochastic processes and their analyses.

I don't think the non-programmable shirt pocket 4-banger or basic scientific is going away anytime soon. Their size and the dirt cheap price for one makes them too convenient. Always carried the 1995 TI-36x Solar when I was on a plant operations floor (don't like the looks of the current TI-36 ;-) ). Everything from a quick and dirty simple stats problem to calculating dimensions required for new operations and rearranging the existing ones. Graphing calculators are too big to fit into a pants pocket unless you're wearing cargo pants.

John