When HP used to be great
I have to admit that I felt a twinge of hope for the company when HP announced its acquisition of Palm and WebOS. Alas, those hopes are forever dashed.
This week, Hewlett Packard unceremoniously pulled the plug on its TouchPad and related WebOS products. The news didn’t really come as a surprise to anyone following tech, given how lackluster the underlying hardware was.
HP had an opportunity with WebOS and blew it by launching the tablet prematurely. The ramifications of the decision to bury WebOS, I feel, will haunt HP well into the future.
But there were happier days – when HP was a flagship company known for its quality products and innovation. At one point in time, they made the best printers and calculators on the market. Above is one of two HP products I’ve ever owned – an HP48G scientific calculator. (The other was an HP4M, which sits abandoned in my parents’ garage.) I bought the calculator 18 years ago and it still works beautifully, just as it did when I first purchased it for my sophomore Circuits course.
The HP48G wasn’t cheap – it retailed for around $240, making it a significant purchase for a poor college student. The calculator came in a hefty box with a carrying case, and very thorough (but imminently useful) users manual (remember those?). Moving to the HP48G was a definite step up from my trusty TI-68. Unlike most scientific calculators, the HP48G used Reverse Polish Notation (RPN). RPN took some practice to get used to, but once I learned to love the “Stack”, I could truly appreciate its power for heavy-duty calculations.
I carried my HP48G everywhere – it was my trusted companion throughout my undergrad and grad engineering courses. Engineering students would carry theirs around like a badge of honor. We would use the built-in IR port to trade programs and (shock!) even games.
The HP48G was well-built, well documented, and an example of what HP could produce during its heyday. It reminds me of the company that HP once was.
But, alas, it seems those days are long past now. Here’s to the old HP, where ever you are now.
-Krishna
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kaitou
August 20, 2011 at 11:48 amThey’re called “Agilent”. HP spun off the test equipment (i.e. what they did in the first place) division into a company called Agilent. I still have old HP test equipment on my bench that still works as well as ever. Somewhere, I still have my HP67, though the batteries are missing. Ever since they split up, HP quality has seemingly gone downhill.
But then, HP is planing on selling off the personal-systems group, anyway…
Kevin Rubin
August 21, 2011 at 9:33 amI had two HP calculators, the 11C and a 28something (not the fancier 28SS). Both were fantastic and I loved the power of RPN as well. After a short learning curve, it just became an intuitive way of doing math (although, I’d been exposed to Forth before the HP calculators, so it wasn’t entirely new…).
In college we had two big factions, the HP fans and the TI fans. And everyone thought their own was far superior to the other. I have no idea what those TI people were thinking, that’s for sure. Some of them certainly seemed smart…
Although, the last time I had need for some heavy duty number crunching was in the late 90’s when I worked on my then-employer’s software’s financial reports and was totaling up long columns of numbers. Since then, I’ve only done fairly simple math work (or skipped it entirely, in the case of checkbook balancing…)
I think both of them are in the cupboard in India right now… Maybe I’ll bring one back here when I visit in November.
Blaine Moore
August 21, 2011 at 1:29 pmI still use my 48g…