That's making me lean even closer in the direction of the Treo.

I also like that it's closer to a general purpose computing device than the sidekick, in that I can install other programs, and perhaps even write my own. Both are possible on the Sidekick as well, but you have to give up any right to hardware support to get the ability to install your own software. Feh.

But I just can't seem to get over the price.

10:12:16 AM    comments ()  trackback []  

Reading about the new 33S made me think about my first HP, a 33E. It's funny, what I remember most about the 33E is not the programming, or the build quality, although both were just fantastic. What I remember the most is the way it would indicate that it was busy. Whenever it was doing something that took a long time, it would display seemingly random things on the display. Not random numbers, nothing really recognizable, just strange little patterns of LED segments. But they weren't really random -- you could learn to figure out what the calculator was doing based on what it was displaying. Trig stuff would look one way, logs another. I was fascinated with it, and I started writing programs that would invoke these functions in interesting ways, just so that I could watch them run.

I guess that was my first display hack.

I liked that it would do the funky display things because it made you feel like it was actually getting something done. Other calculators would just say "busy" or keep the display blank until it had an answer, but because the HP gave you something to look at, it didn't feel like it took as long. It was a neat little human interaction trick.

I wonder what was driving the display?

9:23:46 AM    comments ()  trackback []