Philadelphia Area HP Handheld Club Meeting

Tuesday, February 23, 1993 - Drexel University

All of a sudden, a number of new rumors have surfaced regarding new HP calculator and palmtop products. They have been going in the background since the Corvallis conference in August of 1991, but lately have really increased in frequency and detail. The first is related to new HP48 calculator products. This appeared on Usenet in the past couple of weeks:

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/Gateways/Usenet/comp/sys/hp48/"New" Version of HP-48SX! 18680.3.3624.1 "New" Version of HP-48SX!

2/11/93 14:59 15/685 WRIGHTCH%DFEE@pcmail.usafa.af.mil (Cameron H. G. Wright) Lines 1 to 15 of 15 (100%)

The other day I received the early registration flyer for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference. It included a blurb that said HP would be unveiling a "...new, more powerful, easier-touse version of the HP-48SX..." at this conference (June 20-23 on the Univ. of Illinois campus) and that registered attendees would be able to purchase the machine at the conference. It will have the ASEE logo on it. I believe it said the new machine wouldn't be available to the public until September.Does anybody know anything about this "new" HP-48SX?

Cameron Wright

Department of Electrical Engineering

U.S. Air Force Academy

wright@ee.usafa.af.mil

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/Gateways/Usenet/comp/sys/hp48/"New" Version of HP-48SX! 18680.3.3624.2

Re: "New" Version of HP-48SX! 2/14/93 21:50 28/1294

carstelh@nextwork.Rose-Hulman.Edu. (Lans H Carstensen) Lines 1 to 28 of 28 (100%)

In article <WRIGHTCH%DFEE.13@pcmail.usafa.af.mil> WRIGHTCH%DFEE@pcmail.usafa.af.mil (Cameron H. G. Wright) writes:

> The other day I received the early registration flyer for the American

> Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference. It included a

> blurb that said HP would be unveiling a "...new, more powerful,easier-to-

> use version of the HP-48SX..." at this conference (June 20-23 on the Univ.

> of Illinois campus) and that registered attendees would be able to purchase

> the machine at the conference. It will have the ASEE logo on it. I believe

> it said the new machine wouldn't be available to the public unitl September

One of my EE profs told me this last week. Called it the HP-48GX. I don't know, it's all rumors, etc. I think someone in the department was considered for beta-testing it, or something. I found it rather interesting, as I just bought a 48SX this last year before the J revision. As for what new features, I don't know but I would assume that maybe one or two of the may "wishlist" things might be on their. Let's hope!

Lans Carstensen

RHIT Class of '95 - Delta Sigma Phi

Now as recently as yesterday, an EXTREMELY reliable source had these details:

This conflicts a bit with other rumors, at least as to the announcement date. The original announcement of the HP48SX corresponded to an educational conference, where HP made units available for low-cost to attendees. If the machine is announced in April, then the cat will be out of the bag for a long time by the time the ASEE conference (mentioned above) is held this Summer. Perhaps the machines won't be shipping for awhile but that the first lot will be made available in June to the teachers at the University of Illinois.

Another thought is that since the unit will not be called the "HP48SX-II", that indicates that the SX and GX will probably coexist for some time. With the prices very close together as rumored, one would think that sales of the 'SX machines will drop off rather quickly. Something will have to give on the price eventually, or else the SX will simply fade away as the HP28S effectively did shortly after the HP48 was introduced.

And now for some more recent rumors from Usenet:

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/Gateways/Usenet/comp/sys/paimtops/The next HP95LX version 20011.3.2077.1

The next HP95LX version 2/21/93 18:37 17/690

ggolden@msen.com (Glenn R. Golden) Lines 1 to 17 of 17 (100%)

I saw in InfoWorld (on the first page) last week mention of the next version of the HP95LX.It is said to be available in April of this year, and cost 600 - 800 US dollars. It is said to be based on a 8086 processor, have a PCMCIA 2 slot, and include cc:mail remote as one of the built in apps, and also include the current apps in ROM.(I'm doing this from memory, so may have missed or messed up a detail ... )I am surprised that I have seen no information about this in this group! Anyone know about this? Can anyone confirm, or add information?

- Glenn R. Golden Global Architect @ Comshare, Inc.

Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

(home) ggolden@msen.com (work) ggolden@comshare.com

With respect to this rumor, the 8086 CPU sounds wrong, since they were talking about 80286-class processing power in this unit as early as last September in London. The PCMCIA 2.0 slot makes perfectsense. The past rumors also indicated that the LCD would be higher resolution (perhaps as much as 25 by 80) but in the same physical case as the existing HP95. The case staying the same size also makes sense, since Sparcom continues to push their Station95 docking station harder than ever. They would be left in the dust by HP if the HP95 followon was a different size or shape. In order for the user to take more advantage of placing a PCMCIA 2.0-type card in the card slot (such as a modem), I would think that HP would have to build a good deal more RAM inside the box as standard. I think 2 megabytes sounds about right. Coupled with Stacker data compression software, 2 meg might just work out as a 640K working ram unit with effective 3-meg RAM disk and modem in the card slot. We'll see.

Don't count out the rumors in the press of that "subnotebook" machine coming from HP either. It should be an interesting remainder of 1993. Speaking of more and more palmtops, check out the ad from Underware Electronics which is reproduced in this handout. Someone mentioned in Usenet that he had called them about their 386SX-20 palmtop and they said that they would be ready to ship in a few weeks. I'll believe it when I see it. This would be prime competition for any new palmtops from HP.

One more topic of interest has come up recently, and that is an HP48 "programmer's competition" which is being organized by some folks at the University of Saskatchewan. Check out some notes on the competition which are being circulated on Usenet among some individuals who are contributing programming problems. When the final details are published, I will make sure they are circulated to anyone who is interested.

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