Why do calculator manufactures like to reinvent the wheel?

[HP67]

If I understand correctly, your experience seems to be mostly in academia, while I was talking about industry and the public works and commercial sectors.

In my experience in those areas, it's been common to see civil engineers and surveyors with HP calculators, and programmers with HP calculators. Since there hasn't been much going on in new products in the calculator world, an HP 48 is the usual suspect in those environments. They're still perfectly useful today.

And anyway, my use of the phrase "lock in" was in response to the erroneous statement in the thread that HP has lock in because of the education market. Nobody who knows about HP would claim such a thing. If HP has any lock in, it's in engineering, etc. Prime is all about trying to break into the education market.