Omnimaga
Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on September 11, 2013, 03:18:20 pm
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Since September began and HP and fans started unveiling HP Prime resellers on the HP Prime Facebook page (see comments) (https://www.facebook.com/HPPrimeCalculator?fref=ts), there began to be concerns that the new 400 MHz, color touch screen graphing calculator, would only be available for sale for people in United States or Europe. In other words, Canadians, Australians and Asians were pretty much screwed. In addition to that, it was believed that certain American resellers were being supplied by European ones, forcing them to sell the calculator at least $50 above the rumored MSRP of $139.99 or 149.99 and questioning even further the availability of the calculator outside Europe.
Well, good news: HPCalc.org (http://www.hpcalc.org/) now lets you pre-order the calculator (http://commerce.hpcalc.org/) and they ship worldwide! The store also sells other HP calculators, as well as accessories. The HP Prime is backordered until September 30th, which might be an indication about the release date. Some other stores might have it shipped earlier, although HPCalc is the only store that ships the HP Prime to Canada for now.
Hopefully, there are other resellers and stores selling it worldwide soon too and we hope that brick-and-mortar stores will carry it as well. It will be hard to judge how popular this calculator will be for now, though, as it just missed the back-to-school time, much like the Casio PRIZM did in 2010. We will most likely know next August.
You can already start creating programs or try the calculator for free with the official emulator. (http://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=19606) (no ROM required)
UPDATE (Sept 15th): Another website now allows worldwide pre-orders! http://www.samsoncables.com/catalog/index.cfm
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Man I wish I had money right now. :P That's awesome and I look forward to getting one eventually. :D
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Shipping to France is dang expensive though. O.O
Edit : still cheaper than French prices though (€130 total vs 155). :)
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(130€ == 172$)
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I remember seeing the calc for 149 euros on many European websites. This is pretty much close to $200 USD and that's without shipping fees. In any case you might be better off buying it on an American website unless you find one in France where shipping is free.
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Shipping to France is dang expensive though. O.O
Edit : still cheaper than French prices though (€130 total vs 155). :)
Depends on which French prices you are talking about. You have a bargain if you are (or if you know) a teacher, and you can get a Prime for 120€ (http://www.calculatrices-hp.com/uploads/pdf/tarif_enseignant_2013.pdf).
(source: http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=12944&p=147681)
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It's funny how some stuff is more expensive in certain countries while other stuff is more expensive in different countries. For example, HP calc prices in Canada are insane ($207 for an HP 50g, while South of the border it's $136), while in France, it's Casio calc prices that are ridiculous.
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Shipping to France is dang expensive though. O.O
Edit : still cheaper than French prices though (€130 total vs 155). :)
Depends on which French prices you are talking about. You have a bargain if you are (or if you know) a teacher, and you can get a Prime for 120€ (http://www.calculatrices-hp.com/uploads/pdf/tarif_enseignant_2013.pdf).
(source: http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=12944&p=147681)
My mom is an English teacher. I wonder if that'd work. :P
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I'm gald to hear that it will be available soon. I'll have to get my preorder in shortly. :D
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Shipping to France is dang expensive though. O.O
Edit : still cheaper than French prices though (€130 total vs 155). :)
Depends on which French prices you are talking about. You have a bargain if you are (or if you know) a teacher, and you can get a Prime for 120€ (http://www.calculatrices-hp.com/uploads/pdf/tarif_enseignant_2013.pdf).
(source: http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=12944&p=147681)
My mom is an English teacher. I wonder if that'd work. :P
Sounds weird, but it probably will. My dad is a german teacher and I got a bargain on my nspire cx.
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yaaay, you can pre-order it! :w00t:
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Another website now allows worldwide pre-orders! http://www.samsoncables.com/catalog/index.cfm
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Cool shipping is cheaper with this one. :D
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Nice. What I wonder, though, is if there are extra fees upon ordering when you pre-order, once the calc comes out? I mean, for example if you pay $130 to pre-order the calc, do you pay an extra $20 when the calc is released and the seller can finally ship them? I am wondering, since the MSRP seems to be $149.99 or something.
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I hope not. Pre orders are normally meant to be cheaper.
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Hm, this'll maybe land on my wish list for my b-day :P
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... In other words, Canadians, Australians and Asians were pretty much screwed.
Hey man, I believe they owe you one and should send it by Express mail and free. Too bad for them. :P
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On HPcalc.org, the "backordered until Sept 30th" has been changed to the 28th.
Also, as reported by Lionel on TI-Planet, two people already got their calc from other resellers.
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=13016&p=148330#p148330
http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/forum.cgi?read=250691#250691
http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/forum.cgi?read=250693#250693
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I just ordered mine. :) I'll post when (if? D:) it gets here.
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Good news, the "Backordered" status on Hpcalc.org really means that the calc can't be shipped until that date. I was worried that they would receive them on Sept 28th but not necessarily ship right away due to large amount of orders, but I just got an USPS notice saying that my package is due to ship on the 28th.
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Hm, this'll maybe land on my wish list for my b-day :P
Already was for me. :) ordered yesterday.
It gets here on the 3rd
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My calc finally arrived! :D It finally took slightly less than two weeks. Just one little warning, though: If you order from Hpcalc internationally, I don't think they send the package as a gift or something like many other sellers do, so on delivery you might have to pay the taxes.
I like how fast this thing is for most calculations :D (and programs). Something I noticed is that Critor probably didn't remove the WAIT commands in the programs I sent him a while back. I now tried them with WAIT removed and they run even faster than his videos (for example, the 800x800 picture scrolls at about 100 FPS O.O when not scaled, and 30 FPS when scaled up/down)
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Congratulations, welcome to the club! :D
I think I released another video after removing the wait.
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Ah ok I might not have seen it. So far the only major issue though is that at the beginning of the Tunnel game (not the version I sent you but the other one that added extra stuff) the stretching animation doesn't work well in most cases, so there might be an issue with BLIT or DIMGROB. However that's the only program in which I ran into it (even the two other programs I sent you that used scaling don't have the issue). Something I notice too that wasn't present on the emulator is that the size of a rectangle or image impacts the speed. So basically, if you ever make a program that runs a bit too slow, you could always simulate 160x120 resolution to save speed.
Also I made a program that scrolled through a vertical sprite sheet copied accross the screen and it was quite fast too, so Supersonic Ball might definitively be possible. At least with BASIC this fast and versatile, the lack of ASM won't sound as bad as it did on the Nspire CX for the time being, although it would be nice to see it happen in the future (and not blocked). :)
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Oh ya, DJ I forgot to mention to you that the stretch acts funny sometimes. I've had it do a total of about 5 different things (glitches). Other than that I frigging LOVE my hp prime.
On the first day having it at school (2nd), I convince 3 people to get one, a junior, a senior, and my math teacher.
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Yeah for me the size of the stretch seems kinda random. Also I'm glad your school has no restriction on which calcs you can get yet (such as forcing everyone to get an Nspire running OS 3.2.4).
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LOL. ^ Here we can have the calc we want. The only thing they can do is forbid any calc, but if you can have a calc, most likely any are accepted (except maybe competitive exams where you can't have a programmable calc).
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..Also I'm glad your school has no restriction on which calcs you can get yet (such as forcing everyone to get an Nspire running OS 3.2.4).
Have your heard of something like that ever happenning in Canada or elsewhere? Oh dear! O.O
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Oh ya, DJ I forgot to mention to you that the stretch acts funny sometimes. I've had it do a total of about 5 different things (glitches). Other than that I frigging LOVE my hp prime.
On the first day having it at school (2nd), I convince 3 people to get one, a junior, a senior, and my math teacher.
Glad to hear. :-)
Can you please post some code that shows the stretching issues you saw and describe what you expected. I know a minor issue or two was resolved around the grob scaling and I'd like to check that they don't happen anymore. Some might not be fixable as it does a very rough linear scaling with no interpolation, but others probably are/were.
Anyone else as well.
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Oh ya, DJ I forgot to mention to you that the stretch acts funny sometimes. I've had it do a total of about 5 different things (glitches). Other than that I frigging LOVE my hp prime.
On the first day having it at school (2nd), I convince 3 people to get one, a junior, a senior, and my math teacher.
Glad to hear. :-)
Can you please post some code that shows the stretching issues you saw and describe what you expected. I know a minor issue or two was resolved around the grob scaling and I'd like to check that they don't happen anymore. Some might not be fixable as it does a very rough linear scaling with no interpolation, but others probably are/were.
Anyone else as well.
I will post it in the bugs report thread later (I already posted a list of issues I ran into at http://ourl.ca/19642/363476;topicseen#new , although some are more physical design issues, not software issues, although I wasn't sure if you saw it yet).
I might also post a video showing the glitch in action, before and after running various programs to show the difference. One interesting thing is that the larger the scaled area, the slower it is, which tells me it has something to do with the GROB or BLIT dimensions not being setup properly rather than BLIT failing to update parts of the screen.
..Also I'm glad your school has no restriction on which calcs you can get yet (such as forcing everyone to get an Nspire running OS 3.2.4).
Have your ever heard of something like that ever happennig in Canada or elsewhere? Oh dear! O.O
Only in United States and Netherlands so far, and not every school does it.
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..Also I'm glad your school has no restriction on which calcs you can get yet (such as forcing everyone to get an Nspire running OS 3.2.4).
Have your heard of something like that ever happenning in Canada or elsewhere? Oh dear! O.O
Only in United States and Netherlands so far, and not every school does it.
Hmm, that makes me wonder on how strong TI's school lobbying must be (in said countries) to enforce their own criteria upon teachers and student's parents? IMHO is somewhat of an anti-social behaviour (from strong corporations) which demands some strong reaction. :(
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I got told before that no form of corruption occured (for example, TI giving lots of money to schools so that they ban non-Nspire products), but the people who told me that are affiliated with TI, so I would take those claims with a grain of salt. But I wouldn't be surprised if TI sold teacher bundles for ridiculously low prices (for example 30 TI-Nspires for $1000, which would be like $33 per calc) to these schools and that other companies didn't. I mean, if HP decided to sell teachers HP Primes at $60 each, but TI charged $1000 for 30 calcs, schools would probably go for the cheaper option. Of course that's just speculation, but that's entirely possible.
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As a Canadian, I haven't heard of any local highschool that forces updates on calcs, though I'm drawing on an extremely low sample size.
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In which province do you live, by the way? I know that over here in Quebec, there are still many 84 Plus (hi school and cegep) and 89 Titanium users (university) users and I have a Montreal family relative that went to a school where they didn't use a single graphing calc, but I am unsure if there are schools that forces students to use the Nspire. My hi school days are personally far behind and the teacher usually recommended a TI-82 or 83 Plus, although those in easier math levels were usually recommended a TI-80. I think juju's hi school imported TI-82 Stats from France to lend to students who didn't have a calc.
Of course this might be because the TI-Nspire CX costed close to $200 here until last year, though, which discouraged parents. Now you can get it for $150 sometimes. The HP 50g gotta be the worst at $208 and I have yet to see an HP Prime on a Canadian website (I got mine from an American reseller). Prices are much lower in USA (although TI calcs and the Classpad are still absolutely overpriced)
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I'm in Ontario. It's basically bring a graphing calc if you have/can afford one. Z80 Ti calcs start at about 120CAD, Nspire cx cas at 160CAD, and 68k at 200CAD. Teachers here will let students use a 3.1 ndless Nspire for tests if they have one.
But again, small sample size, so don't jump to conclusions.
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So I got my HP Prime today (earlier than expected!). Everything appears to be in order, but I won't have time to fool with it until tomorrow.
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Mine just broke O.O
just kidding lol. Anyway glad you got one. What I recommend is coding using the emulator since it's faster to type text, but try to backup often anyway in case you accidentally delete your stuff. So far the Prime is my 3rd favorite calc I think (first being the 84+SE family, although I only have a 84+, second being the 84+C Silver Edition and third being the Prime. The 4th would be the Casio Prizm)
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CSE above PRIZM? You need to get your priorities straight, man. :D
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CSE above PRIZM? You need to get your priorities straight, man. :D
Try to do this in Casio PRIZM BASIC (ok to be fair I used LCDTOOL, but all that did was switching from 320x240 res to 160x240):
(http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=16246.0;attach=15159;image) (http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=16246.0;attach=15160;image)
(http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=16246.0;attach=15161;image) (http://illusiat.reubenquest.net/xlib.mtv-music-generator.com_imagesThatWereOn57o9WhereJujuShouldPointTheXlibMTVMGSubdomainToBeforeWeLoseTheGame/zeldalastyle.gif)
Now try to do the following in PRIZM BASIC with the help of any of the available BASIC enhancer add-ins released in the past three years... oh wait, There aren't any:
(http://img.ourl.ca//drawline.gif)
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If, like me, you only can stand BASIC as programming language and are not willing to learn Lua, ASM nor C, then good luck getting even close to that speed. Even if I set my 84+CSE to 6 MHz instead of 15 and my PRIZM to 94.3 MHz instead of 58, CSE drawing is still faster.
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Even if I set my 84+CSE to 6 MHz instead of 15 and my PRIZM to 94.3 MHz instead of 58, CSE drawing [in BASIC] is still faster.
Which is speaking volumes about how much the PRIZM's BASIC utterly sucks...
IIRC, it's due to high latency of all commands (hundreds of ms before anything gets done, even a single pixel change), rather than low throughput of any of them ?
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Yes, it's a latency issue. Home screen display doesn't have this problem (in fact that part is faster than the CSE), but sometimes we want more than just ASCII art for graphics. The ClassPad fixes the latency issue I think, but the interpreter overall is even slower than the PRIZM even for non-drawing commands.
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Anyway glad you got one. What I recommend is coding using the emulator since it's faster to type text, but try to backup often anyway in case you accidentally delete your stuff.
Yepp, I was happy to see it arrive early. :D I'll check out coding on the emulator and see how it feels. :)
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Just remember that the emulator is way faster than the real calc, so if you are making some complex game, don't get your hopes up too fast if it runs at insane speed on your computer. That said, even on the real calc it should be really fast. :P
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CSE above PRIZM? You need to get your priorities straight, man. :D
Try to do this in Casio PRIZM BASIC (ok to be fair I used LCDTOOL, but all that did was switching from 320x240 res to 160x240):
[...]
Hey, I can do all that with LuaZM... :P
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Yep but that's not BASIC :P (I know certain Nspire users who prefer BASIC were turned away by Lua language because they found it much harder than the on-calc language). That said, xLIB and xLIBC are kinda confusing at times, though, since every extra command syntaxes are like real( commands followed by plenty of numbers.
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But... But... Lua isn't event hat hard...
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It depends. I know that certain people ditched it because they were annoyed at some of its quirks or finding it too hard. There are certain people who will never be able to learn anything more complex than Casio PRIZM and TI-83 BASIC. As I said on IRC earlier, I prefer to concentrate my energy on those languages, along with HP PPL (which is similar to PRIZM BASIC to a certain extent), to create stuff faster, than end all my development for months, trying to learn how to do it in a different language. If in a few years I notice that my health is stable and that I have free time to learn different languages, I might reconsider, but now I am not taking much chances in case.
Besides, when I get some ideas I want to put them into games as soon as possible. If I am stopped by having to learn something or a release date delay for too long, I slowly lose interest. For example, had xLIBC came out back in July/August, there would probably be a rather large RPG in the works right now.