Personally I’ve never been into calculators.  Oh sure they are ‘fun’ typing in 80087335 and other vital things, but what I always wanted was a real hand held computer.

Yes the HP graphing calculators could be programmed but really, it’s 2011 and the fact that the market is largely unchanged is just freaking criminal.

Then enter the new / old HP 12c.  This is interesting as it isn’t some ancient 1980s era junky calculator but rather an ARM embedded processor emulating the old software.  And of course that means that this baby is 100x faster than the old 1980’s model.  Well that is refreshing since the last time I looked at a calculator it was frustratingly slow today as it was then.

What is more so interesting is the price, $80 for the financial version and $100 for the engineering version.

But I digress what I’d rather have is something like the old OQO, a hand held PC that can run any real software.

What is interesting to me is a small resurgence in old machines repackaged, and of course resold to their original nostalgic market.

What I’d really be interested in is some DEC VT-100 terminal that comes with its own VAX-11/780 emulator… It’d be a midrange system in a terminal form factor!  But I don’t see HP doing that anytime soon.  In the meantime I guess I can always score a Commodore 64.