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1997 Fools: Press Release: Announcing the hp58
Subject: Press Release: Announcing the hp58 From: makoto@cs.ubc.ca (Makoto Tony Kobayashi) Date: 1997/04/01 Message-Id: <5hs4gq$57n@cascade.cs.ubc.ca> Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp48 For immediate release: Hewlett Packard announced today the release of the newest member in its popular handheld calculator series, the hp58. Improvements have been made in graphics, memory, and computing speed while comfortingly retaining the familiar physical dimensions of the cherished hp48. The announcement caught many members of the handheld calculator community by surprise. When questioned why Hewlett Packard did not make earlier announcements, spokesperson Aho Shigatsu replied, "We really wanted to catch the handheld calculator community by surprise." Most prominent among the improvements are a higher resolution (1024x768), 24-bit true color, more memory, and a faster internal processor. Shigatsu commented, "We initially tried to go for an active LCD matrix for the display, but unfortunately at that resolution and screen size, LCD wasn't good enough. So we developed our own display technology -- a trichromatic pulsed laser display. Of course, since we've gotten rid of the need for the traditional electron gun, we can replace the phosphor screen with a simple diffusion gradient. The colors are just brilliant! Brighter reds, deeper blues, and warmer greens than you'll see anywhere else. Unfortunately, it does have a tendency to burn out your eyes..." The hp48GX's built in 128k RAM has been replaced by 16M RAM and 128k of cached RAM. The processor's clock speed is 5GHz (gigahertz) and with a full pipeline, some benchmarks will attain 2.4 BIPS (billion instructions per second). Shigatsu qualified, "But to be honest, you won't see 2.4 BIPS most of the time. For most applications, you'd expect an average 1.1 BIPS or so." The secret to their high performance? Shigatsu hinted, "Two words -- `quantum lightgates'." The computing power was necessary to support the new proprietary multitasking operating system modelled after the popular "HP View" system used on Hewlett Packard's higher end workstations. For the pointing device, a mouse was considered, but deemed too inconvenient for handheld use. So how did they do it? "Heh, heh, heh... we've got a little camera mounted inside the logo on the upper right hand side of the hp58. It scans your face and tracks the position of your eyeballs. Of course, the screen is also touch sensitive if you prefer a more old fashioned method." To power the hp58, each one comes equipped with a miniature thermonuclear fusion reactor. "Hey, don't worry, they're safe! Really! We've tested them out and everything. We tried to go with batteries, but found that even with D cells, the hp58 would only run for 7.9 seconds. We think it's the cellular modem that's ... oh, did I mention the cellular modem?" That's right, to meet the demands of today's ever growing communications driven society, the hp58 includes a cellular modem. Also, each hp58 will come with its own internet IP address. "We thought about adding a GPS (global positioning system). But we didn't want to go overboard. After all, it's just a calculator." Mach -- http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/makoto/home.html ,-----------------------. ,------------------. ,----------------------' ###' / `### | | Makoto Kobayashi | | See homepage section ##( /)/) )## hp48 | | makoto@cs.ubc.ca | | Random_SigFile_Topic ###. / ,### |
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