I had read several reviews about the "new" HP-35s, it was introduced as a successor to the HP-33s to commemorate the 35th Anniversary of the original HP-35 from Hewlett Packard. I decided to buy one when the price was right on eBay.
I will tell you what I think of it.
I titled this blog entry because I really don't know where this planet is going with technology, it seems at every stage of progress, we go backwards. If I harken back to my family tree roots, around the turn of the 20th Century, several of my family worked at the Lancashire Watch Company in Prescot, they were involved in making timepieces of excellence, clockwork pocket watches that kept good time and some that only needed winding every eight days. Here we are a hundred and thirty years later, and people with so called "smart" watches need to recharge them every third day and if there is no power, then the watch will die.
It seems that the planet is going backwards, not forwards and the HP-35s is a good example of consumer products that on first look, appear to be robust, but in reality are not meant to last.
This is a rant, and I am sure many find the calculator a little powerhouse, but I will be quite surprised if calculators such as this have the lifespan of the original Hewlett Packards, these new calculators are branded HP, but are basically Chinese crap.
The case is bonded leather that deteriorates as soon as you open the package, for those that do not know, bonded leather is not leather, and it does not wear well. It will protect the device, but in a matter of weeks, will look like the dog's breakfast.
The calculator itself feels nice, and a lot of the enthusiasts are all happy about it having the big "enter" key and the ability to use RPN as the input method, but that is where the similarity to the classic calculators ends, in my humble opinion, this is an absolute train wreck. I am sure many will disagree, the calculator is very powerful, it has classic looks, keys that almost feel like the original keys, but not quite, because someone in production along the way decided they could save a few cents per key, and then the next generation decided to do the same.
The race to zero.
