Philadelphia Area HP Handheld Club Meeting

Wednesday, March 1, 1995 - Drexel University

Low-End LX Model Coming?

An new rumor is floating around these days, regarding the imminent introduction of a lesser companion to the HP200LX DOS palmtop computer. This unit will be a "stripped" model, with much of the built-in applications removed (including Lotus 1-2-3). This more generic unit is supposed to sell for significantly fewer dollars than its predecessors. Sounds like another aggressive move from the Singapore division, new head of palmtops and handhelds.

Texas Instruments Turns on the Competition

In a recently-released document called a "technology preview", TI pre-announced their committment to a new calculator-based product which looks like their first serious competitor for Hewlett-Packard's HP48 series machines. This as-yet-unnamed machine supposedly will have a QWERTY keyboard and large (palmtop-sized) LCD, assuming the size of perhaps the HP200LX lying wide open. Expected features mentioned in the document include algebra and calculus, geometry and statistics, symbolic manipulation, interactive geometry, 2D and 3D graphing, and I/O for input of real-world data. TI claims it is working with the developers of other math-based learning systems in order to incorporate the most possible utility for education. The unit is expected to cost around $200. and be released some time in 1996. A handful of math educators supposedly will get prototypes when they are available. Check out the article from Usenet News later in this handout.

HP48 Goodies Disk 10 Preview

When Joseph Horn demonstrated (at the January Las Vegas HP users meeting) some of the HP48 programs which he intends to include in the upcoming Goodies Disk #10, the attendees were all very impressed. Here's a list of those items which he showed:

1. An extremely fast and useful flag browser
2. HP48 battery checker
3. "Jazz" ML and SysRPL development tools library
4. "GRBX" message box builder for GROBS & text
5. Object "codifier" which turns any object into a CODE object
6. The latest version of a "Friday the 13th" program
7. "PCT" PC Tools library for fast object manipulation
8. Graphic memory viewer application
9. "ED33/AV33" editor/viewer for objects in 10-line, 33-column mode
10. Custom menu key converted to real-time clock/calendar
11. "SPORT" port-searching function for libs and vars
12. "PACK/UPK" fast object packer/unpacker
13. Self-extracting graphic object builder
14. "Gray-scale" GROB viewer
15. Graphic drawing/fill utilities
16. Updated "FATCAL" calendar utilities program
17. "LIBEX" library extractor
    

I will make these programs available to the group as soon as I can get my hands on them.

Las Vegas, Dutch Conference Tapes Available

I now have master tapes made from both the Dutch PROMPT Tenth Anniversary conference (last October) and from the Las Vegas HP users meeting & Winter Consumer Electronics Show visit. Copies can be made for anyone who is interested. Feel free to contact me for details.