Philadelphia Area HP Handheld Club Meeting | Thursday, December 17, 1998

Drexel University

Hewlett-Packard Journal Goes Out of Print

When the latest issue of the HP Journal arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, it seemed a bit different: for it was only four pages long. Since the frequency of the issues was slowed to quarterly, the number of pages had been increased to almost a hundred per issue. Therefore I was surprised to receive this "pamphlet" in lieu of Volume 50, issue number 1. In it was a cover page, a table of contents and a page describing that since the World Wide Web had become ubiquitous, it made more sense for HP to cease physical printing and distribution of the Journal. From this point forward, the HPJ would only be available on HP's web site at http://www.hp.com/hpj/journal.html as a downloadable document. To me, this is a sad turn of events. No longer will one be able to quickly reference an issue from the bookshelf. Granted, this will save Hewlett-Packard a significant amount of cash, but it always seemed that a printed showcase of the best and brightest from HP's ranks was special. Perhaps the lure of saving the money was just too much for the current crop of purse-string holders. And those issues containing calculator-related articles will be even more treasured now.

PPC CD-ROM #3 and Philly HP Group CD in the Works

Following HP's granting permission to convert the old handhelds' manuals to CD format, I have embarked on two projects at the same time. The first is PPC CD disk #3, which will contain the manuals from the old "Classic" series calculators - the HP35, 45, 55, 65, and 67 scientifics and the HP70 and HP80 business machines. If there is space, the desktop printing HP46 and HP81 will also be included. Some improvements over the first two PPC disks will include all-color pages, higher-resolution scans and (hopefully) a text-search capability.

The other disk project grew out of a handful of requests from out-of-towners to "join" the Philly group as mail-only subscribers to our printed handouts. I have never advocated a subscription service due to the work involved, but perhaps doing a CD containing all the materials from the handouts could be an adequate substitute. My goal here, initially, is to produce a disk containing all the handouts from the 1990's, and offer it for sale to offset the mailing costs incurred over the past several years. Then, as time goes by, more issues may be added to the disk from both newer meetings and older ones as the handouts are scanned in. We'll see what happens.

New HP "Information Appliance" Scans, Copies and Beams

A recently-introduced handheld product from HP hopes to perform many jobs that a business person on the go might wish to do while on the go. Dubbed the CapShare 910, this device will scan printed material (covering an 8 and a half-inch wide page in two sweeps), capture the data directly in Adobe portable document (pdf) format and then beam it via infrared to either a PC or printer equipped to receive the IR using the HP JetSend protocol. Up to 50 pages may be stored in the AA-battery-powered device. A built-in LCD shows what has been scanned, and the unit automatically aligns the left and right half of the page scans into full pages. This sounds like quite a little marvel at $699.

Jim Lawson's Handi Calc is Branching Out

Recently, Jim Lawson has produced some new printed materials for his Handi Calc HP handheld business, promoting some of the add-on applications books offered by HP. These cover Technical, Mathematics and Business & Finance applications for the full line of machines currently offered. In addition, Jim has decided to begin offering the full line of relatively low-cost Sony Microcassette tape recorders as well. He is familiar with all of them, and can offer a brochure comparing and contrasting the seven models for those who are interested. Jim can be reached at 732-928-9528 on weekday evenings and weekends. I maintain a web page for Handi Calc which may be found at http://www.waterw.com/~jake-s/handyclc.htm.

 

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