In a posting on the HP Prime Portal, Klaas Kuperus of Moravia, an HP calculator distributor in Europe, announced that production of the HP 50g will be ending this year:



On the Museum of HP Calculators, Klaas further confirmed that the original source was HP's European, Middle Eastern, and African calculator team.

Maybe I'll have to watch for bargains and stock up on 50g's...

...or look more deeply into the Prime. But does it really have all the capabilities, flexibility, programmability, configurability, convenience, and elegance of the entire 48/49/50 line? They implemented a lot of solid concepts including the file system, "keystroke programmability", the "everything is an object" paradigm, the entire RPN/RPL system, transparent user-defined libraries, high-resolution clock/alarms (even though they never worked properly once they moved to the ARM), and later, things like custom fonts and all the built-in assemblers/programming tools, all of which make for an absolutely unmatched on-calc development vehicle. Not to mention everything else, big and small, I've no doubt forgotten.

And without some kind of compatibility layer, there's at least a 15-year-old software library going down the drain. (I haven't been overly impressed with the emulators I've tried, and they're not terribly useful without a real, physical calc keyboard and proper SD card support.)

I've also heard anecdotally that the Prime team is nowhere near the size that the 48/49/50 enjoyed, and is still subject to layoffs.

There's a lot at stake.

I just picked up one from the recent Amazon $50 sale, but I may have to pick up another. The Prime seems to be still a bit of a work in progress, but I suspect I'll end up picking up one.