A New Laptop Computer!

I purchased a new Laptop / Notebook computer today, a HP DV7-2040US computer powered by a Quad-Core processor, the Intel Core 2 Quad processor Q9000, with 4 GB of RAM and 500 GB SATA hard disk. I'm looking forward to having it delivered by next Tuesday, and plan on making it a tri-boot machine, just like my HP Workstation is. (Windows Vista, Ubuntu Linux 9.04, and my custom OS.) Since this will be my first Quad-core machine, I look forward to getting my custom OS to run on the L2 cache of all four cores, and work on inter-core communication protocols. Yes, I am very much looking forward to getting involved in the multi-core, parallel-processing arena too.

The HP-50G

I've been a HP Calculator fan since 1979 when I purchased my first HP, the HP-41C. No surprise there, eh? Well, 30 years have passed since then and the state of the art in advanced calculators is now the HP-50G. (I've actually owned mine since 2006.)

Powered by the ARM9 processor, and running at a nominal 75 MHz clock speed, this advanced, battery-powered handheld computer offers a number of features that make it very useful. It offers algebraic or RPN entry of mathematical formulas and other object types, a highly advanced computer algebra system (aka "CAS"), ARM and Saturn processor development tools, a huge equation library, and some very powerful applications like the Equation Writer and the Matrix Editor. It can be programmed in UserRPL, SystemRPL, ARM assembler, Saturn assembler, LUA, and in C with the very powerful HPGCC toolkit. I am working on adding ARM zForth to the list as well.

I'm also looking forward to attending the HHC 2009 conference on October 3rd and 4th this year in Vancouver, Washington. I hope to ride Amtrak with my good friend Tom Vogel there and back. (Tom wants to visit his daughter Dawn, who lives in nearby Seattle.)