alt Hacker News> But the 15c 'Collector's Edition' had some issues, and I wonder about the build quality and reliability of this new one, too.
Build quality deteriorated (from impressive heights) more than 25 years ago, when HP's calculator manufacturing moved to China. Not on account of China itself, but it was definitely a cost-cutting measure, and higher-end calculators were becoming an endangered species even then. For example, keycaps used to be double-shot injection molded, so the legends could never wear out; no more, now they're silkscreened like with everyone else. The new key mechanism could never reach the robustness and reliability of the old one, which is a problem if you're used to every keypress felt in your fingertips being correctly registered.
(Not everything was premium quality. On my late 15C, the faceplate logo wore out and the soft sleeve crumbled to dust after a couple of years. But the machine itself continued to work flawlessly until an unfortunate accident with a space heater.)
Additionally, the new Voyagers (1x series) are not running on the original, custom HP "Nut" CPUs, but on ARM microcontrollers, presumably via firmware emulation. It's impressive that the whole things works so transparently, but as I dimly recall, there were problems with that emulation in the first 15C Collector Edition runs, supposedly fixed now.
So, if you buy a new Voyager these days, you're getting a convincing replica of the originals from the '80s, nothing more. Caveat emptor.
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Yep. I showed this to my wife, also an engineer, and her first response was, “oh, the buttons were so satisfying!” We both had HP calculators. I had a 15C that got me through high school and college engineering. I was sad when it finally died (replaced the batteries after years of use and it never turned on again).
> cost-cutting measure
They really had no choice, Japanese brands like Casio and Sharp were making dirt-cheap scientific calculators in the '80s, I had one in high school and used it through college. The HPs were intriguing but I could never afford one.
They could have kept their standards up and sold a few to the few people who would pay for them, but that would have been a number that went down every year. A calculator as a veblen good probably would not have worked.