HP Handheld SIG News | January 2000

Handi Calc Will Close Its Doors

After some difficult thought, Jim Lawson has decided to get out of the HP calculator business and thus will be shutting Handi Calc down. Two major factors contributed to this decision. First, Hewlett-Packard not only decided to start selling their calculators via their web site, but chose to discount them heavily; thus competing directly with their own dealers. Secondly, HP decided to stop making calculator manuals available to dealers; instead selling them directly to customers. This one-two punch effectively eliminates Jim's reason for being in the business. He still has a few items in stock. Contact him at 732-928-9528 in Jackson, NJ if you are interested.

New HP49 Beta O.S. Version Available

The latest beta version of the HP49 operating system is version 1.17-2, which fixes some bugs and also adds a few minor features to "official" version 1.16, which has only been available a couple of weeks. Check this out at HP's web site at http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphing/rom/index.html.

2000 CES Upcoming

By the time you read this, the 2000 Winter Consumer Electronics Show will have taken place on January 6th through th 9th. The CES is always interesting, with many handheld electronic items introduced traditionally at this show. I hope to have a fairly complete report at our next meeting. See you at UMMS in January with photos and videotape.