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Student testers of DVT HP Prime appeared

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northern_snow:
According to the HP China agency, the students of Beijing NO.15 Middle School tests the HP Prime in the last month.

http://eduhp.cn/News/Detailed/80

The article said that on June 12th, 2013, a summer camp named "Travelling Through Mathematics and Technology" supported by HP was held in Beijing NO.15 Middle School. In the summer camp, the HP Global Education Manager Tony introduced the HP Prime.

(The translation might not be accurate at some point, but I think it's better than Google translation XD)

And yesterday, two testers appeared on cnCalc.

http://www.cncalc.org/thread-9240-1-1.html
http://www.cncalc.org/thread-9239-1-1.html [Blue Screen photo inside~]

They reported that some DVTs are unstable while others are a bit better. They also mentioned the "Blue Screen", which reminds us the blue screen on NSpire Color. Mutiple-touch is still disabled.

It seems that the biggest problem of the DVTs are they will be automatically turned off. And no settings can disable the feature.  :(

I think the DVT is more like a prototype with the pre-release version software. So hopping HP can do better on the production version.

Lionel Debroux:
We already heard of blue screens on the HP Prime :)
HP has introduced a large amount of new code for the Prime, and it is not rock-solid yet... but they're working on it, there have been multiple important firmware upgrades since two months ago, the latest one just last week.
Some developers communicate directly with the community, and they're pretty receptive and eager to fix bugs.

timwessman:
That actually is more of a marketing activity and not really a testing type activity.

Anyone complaining/worrying about stability before the final version that arrives with the calculator is just unfamiliar with the way things work. In fact, debugging in the ROM wasn't turned off until recently. Generally, when active development for the first version of a software product is happening, anything prior to the first release are development builds or marketing samples. Usually the ROM builds run through a quick automated test to ensure they don't immediately crash with basic operations, and are supposedly sent to a selected set of people who know how to update the units and are aware of the possibility of large issues in order to give feedback on specific things.

However, sometimes those units end up in the hands of people who don't receive the update information, fail to update, choose not to or really never should have received them in the first place.

After a first release of a product things are much more stable and any sort of evaluation versions that go out are much, much more thoroughly tested because there is actually a stable location on which everything else is built upon.

Rest assured, the shipping firmware is very stable. Perfect? No. That is essentially impossible. I am sure there will be bugs found as all software of any marginal complexity will have them, but it is a very good product.


--- Quote ---We already heard of blue screens on the HP Prime Smiley
--- End quote ---

Basically, what that shows is a dump of all the ARM registers. Allows you to track down where it crashed. If I remember my computing history, blue screens were used for error/crashes long before windows, but microsoft definitely made them famous.  ;D


--- Quote ---I think the DVT is more like a prototype with the pre-release version software. So hopping HP can do better on the production version.
--- End quote ---

Datamath actually has a very relevant writeup that explains it quite well (http://www.datamath.org/Story/Phoenix.htm). EVT, DVT, and PVT are standard terms in product design. It is very common to have multiple stages of them as well. For example, an EVT unit might have the near final shape, but the plastic molds don't have texturing, there are missing components, etc. It usually is at this stage that they begin testing EMI. DVT is usually the stage where the unit basically looks final and complete. This is when the final testings/certifications are usually done. PVT is for final checks to make sure the production lines are working properly and consistently. Usually, little is done here - however sometimes issues can be discovered and need resolving.

TIfanx1999:
Thanks for the post Tim. It's very nice to have a bit of insight into the process. :)

SpiroH:

--- Quote from: timwessman on August 16, 2013, 05:44:03 am ---That actually is more of a marketing activity and not really a testing type activity.
...

--- End quote ---
Yeah, it very much sounds like it!
How about offering the Omnimaga community a couple of HP Prime samples so that experts here can test it more thoroughly and provide HP with some valuable end-user feedback. Wouldn't that be also a nice marketing gesture? ;)

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