50g

my response would be that if you need 5" worth of 8.5x11" paper to document the operation of a calculator, you have completely and utterly failed at making the device in any way, shape, form, or fashion intuitive or transparent to the user.

a completely paradigm change is needed, that is obvious to anyone. but there are no more teams of engineers and no more budgets to pay for development when the market is saturated with $8 calculators anyway. we see what the results of outsourcing such development is: layer upon layer of obtuse abstraction with shoddy documentation and not supported by innovative input or output hardware or methods. i mean come on, when little alphabet nubbins (useful as they are) stuck in between other keys are hailed as a breakthrough in input methods, something is seriously broken.

imo, the era of the calculators which nasa astronauts could be proud to take on space missions is long gone. and that's a shame. and having a powerful pocket (even that's not a given anymore with these new super-sized models) calculator you could master in a few weeks because of the brilliant documentation is fast becoming a pipe dream.

/guy

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:14 AM, Ryokyo Lyons <oykoyr@...> wrote:

They could  maximize profit by selling more units. I still have every page of original documentation for my old 48 GX, I printed it all out, and together with all the stuff I found online, it's fills a five inch D ring binder.
HP not only missed the boat with the docs for the 50g, they didn't even come close to the harbor!
And this is a way to get someone to drop $150 on a calculator? By the way, I was in one of the major retail stores the other day (two words, both begin with "b") and the 50g blister pack was down to $139 from $149. That helps, but so would spending more than three cents net on the documentation. HP used to know this. The problem is they've been taken over by a mess of these modern bean counters with short attention spans. And they wonder out loud why their market share is shrinking. Oy vey, how I miss both Mr H and Mr. P.. They were not always right, but every time the shuttle flies these days, I wish I had my "old" 48gx" back again.
Roci



--- On Sun, 7/27/08, martin cohen <mjcohen@...> wrote:

From: martin cohen <mjcohen@...>
Subject: [50g] Re: Digest Number 178 - quality of documentation
To: 50g@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, July 27, 2008, 4:01 PM

Re: Yes I can remember the HP35 and HP45.... good build quality. I don't
really want to get into the pros and cons of manufacturing locations,
however as suggested its all about maximizing bottom line profit.

Take for example the totally inadequate manual and documentation that
comes with the HP50g.. and compare it if you remember to the quality
of the manuals that accompanied both the HP35 and Hp45..

Another example of how to maximize profit...

Walsh

------------ --------- --------- --------- -----

Of course the 50g is orders of magnitude more complex (over 2,000 functions!) than the 35 and 45, which has all their functions right on the keyboard.

I printed out the 50g documentation (about 800 pages, iirc). It would be totally unreasonable to expect this to be included in physical form with the calculator. It would be nice, however, to have it on the calculator itself.