Built to Last, and Last

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How various consumer technology products survive for longer than six months? A year? Most innovations are readily rendered obsolete by the march of technology and customers' not to be satisfied demand for the next next novel thing. Last year's 5-megapixel camera yields to this year's shinier 7-megapixel copy. A desktop printer is hot in April and a closeout peculiar by October.

So what to flow of the Hewlett-Packard 12c, essentially unvaried since its 1981 debut and, 15 the multitude units later, still one of the society's top-selling calculators? Everything it does be able to be replicated--in some cases, with far greater ease--on an Excel spreadsheet. Yet hinder 25 years, the 12c remains a tool of frugal among finance and real estate professionals worldwide. It is continually, as one junior analyst put it, "faction of the banker's kit"--~y unquestioned marker of credibility, if not suitable breeding.

How has this little engine, born in the days of Pac-Man, kept of the like kind a following? Part of the answer has to do with the culture of the finance industry, which embraces as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but cachet and conservatism. HP has played to that place of traffic brilliantly. But the 12c's good fortune is also a function of savvy, farsighted design, the result of a product team that was, in incident, thinking about the long run.

Marketing toward Long Life
From the start, HP persuaded literary institution finance and real estate professors to raise the 12c into class assignments--sending students along to the campus bookstores, which HP had in like manner targeted. The result: a legion of young profession professionals comfortable with and loyal to the 12c. Some bankers impel the same 12c with them from beginning to end their careers (testament, among other things, to the calculator's battery similar as Compaq Evo N115 battery, which can last a decade or longer). "People with industry experience will definitely have their shrewd 12cs with their business cards taped to the back," says Chris Bennett, a pristine-year Wharton student.

"Virtually Indestructible"
HP engineers boor the 12c to the "drop exhibition"--repeatedly releasing it from desk altitude. onto a hard floor. They subjected the keyboard to mechanical button-pushers to simulate the furniture of 5 to 10 years of appliance. Company lore claims 12c's obtain survived close encounters with both a hippo (conversion to an act your imagination) and a snowblower. More to the single thing, says Fred Karwacki, an assistant controller at Covansys Corp., who bought his 12c in 1984, "it has been banged in a circle in airports, had every liquid you be able to think of spilled on it, and it happy has not broken down. It is potentially indestructible."

Money Talks
The original 12c had its logo stamped put ~ real plated gold. "This was not by accident," says Dennis Harms, an in season project manager. "Gold resonated well by the money industries." Still does. With laptop computers and ~; from pole to pole, the 12c (which lists for here and there $80, down from $150 at its debut) has come to be, in some ways, superfluous. But "it says science professional," says Tom Pierce, a inferior-year loan originator at the peculiar investment and real estate firm Greystone & Co. "If you're going to a collection of people and you want to look professional, you possess your suit and tie, maybe a fancy inscribe, and then your 12c."

That Feel-Good Feel
The 12c was designed to fit in a shirt pocket and be perceived good in the palm of your palm. "It's lightweight, and you have power to take it on the go in whatever place you need it," says Fred Valdez, general officer manager of HP's calculator apportionment. That said, some finance pros regular keep it on their desk--to double-control their spreadsheet results. "If I'm doing a thing on a PC, I always work out a couple of examples with the 12c--as there, I always know the say in reply is correct," says Karwacki.

The Polish Factor
Reverse Polish notation? It's a close system for the specification of accurate equations without the use of parentheses or brackets (so named in tribute to Polish mathematician Jan Lukasiewicz, who foremost described it in the 1920s). The 12c embraced RPN, Valdez says, as engineers were convinced "it was clearly a other thing efficient data-entry system." RPN took hold in the business world--but not, it turns aloud, universally: Poles, HP learned only lately, are happier with algebraic data access. In 2003, HP introduced the 12c Platinum, what one. besides faster processing speeds and platinum accents allows customers the choice of RPN or algebraic far-sighted methods.