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Ignatz · (This post was last modified: 01-20-2020 07:36 PM by Ignatz.)

First of all: Happy New Year, everyone!!!

The 50th anniversary of the HP35 will be coming up soon, and it got me to thinking: what would I like to see to commemorate the occasion? The 35S was introduced to mark the 35th anniversary and it's fine calculator, even if it doesn't have the build quality of the original HP calcs. Oh, and the display is a bit $h1t, too...

Now SwissMicros make the $199 DM42, which has a beautiful display, part-metal casing, a blazing-fast processor and a USB-rechargeable battery. The keyboard, however, is horrible. The existence of this calculator shows that there's a market at this price point so, it got me thinking: what if HP were to produce a '35X'? calculator with the display, processor and battery like that of the DM42, but with a proper, resin-injected keyboard, like on the CWSN-series calculators. I'd be falling over myself to give them my money, and it would pay proper homage to the type of design thinking that made the old Hewlett-Packard calculators such magnificent devices.

Oh, and don't let the industrial design team responsible for the Prime and the 50g anywhere near it...

Ah well, I can dream...