On 1998-03-03 classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu said to lisard_at_zetnet.co.uk
:As Joe said, HP classed a lot of things as 'calculators' to get
:round daft export rules...
:IIRC, officially the HP71B is a computer (QWERTY keyboard, Basic),
:but the HP48 is a calculator (alphabetical keyboard, RPL). They use
:virtually the same processor (Saturn), although the HP48 has a few
:more machine instructions.
cx ( <- hello, from firstborn)
it's possible that marketing could have something to do with that too.
we'd rather, and we suspect most engineers would rather, use the hp48 -
but since rpl fits in well with hp's use of rpn in its calculator range,
it probably fit better into the calculator family, and would have been
more targeted at the engineers who cut their teeth on its predecessors.
:> (or do their design engineers just design things they can hack
:>between meetings? ;> )
:You mean _during_ meetings, surely...
well, we meant between design meetings, when one would assume they'd all
be focused on designing the next piece of kit they could hack during
meetings with the pointy-haired bosses... ;>
(now someone's going to turn round and tell us that the pointy-haired
bosses in hp hack on their hp48s during meetings, and wear their hair
that way because they don't know where to find a decent hairdresser.
we've heard about hp.)
--
Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her...
Received on Tue Mar 03 1998 - 17:10:21 GMT