"Limited to 650 units. Sold Out"
https://www.casio.com/jp/basic-calculators/product.S100X-JC1...
"Limited to 650 units worldwide (production units)."
https://www.ebay.de/itm/147282358614
Yes, you will pay more than the original price. But once every 30 years or so I don’t give a fuck, I want this because the video showed a man working on it who cared.
I personally appreciate Teenage Engineering design and also some of Braun designs. This calculator, hard pass for me.
I confess that I use a cheap solar Casio scientific for this purpose, not RPN. That dates back to when my RPN calculator was destroyed in the lab by accident, and I replaced it with something cheaper.
And try to use the em-dash properly these days!
Ordinary choices are between bread and nothing.
A $45 keyboard is rounding error on a $500 keyboard if you decide to buy one.
And buying and trying the cheap one is how a person gets direct experience to make a well informed decision.
It's called "having a style", and there's nothing wrong with it.
NOT ME, NOT ME.
Utility-wise for the cost, it's not outstanding compared to regular calculators. If you spend enough time with S100X for the cost to be justified, then you are wealthy or you are spending way too much time at the calculator and should reconsider your workflow, e.g. using a spreadsheet or Python script instead, and those things are cheaper than this calculator.
Nothing wrong if anyone wants to buy it. But technically there is nothing special here, just the physical appearance/build.
A Grand Seiko could be an apt comparison, this is hand finished rather than mass produced on a production line. Also, by a Japanese craftsperson using a prized skill (lacquer vs zaratsu).
>> vanity item
Who covets a calculator? The attraction here is surely celebrating the craftsmanship and the story / history behind the product and firm that produced it.
I was never more unpopular at school than the day we had an exam and I was learning RPN on a calculator that beeped every time you hit the wrong key.
As it happens, i saw the exhibition at the V&A today. It's decent, but small. Has a bunch of artefacts, and then some videos of some of the artists working, which are interesting.
[1] https://www.msi.com/Business-Productivity/Prestige-13-AI-plu...
[2] https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/urushi-now-contemporary-ja...
[3] https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/luxury/article/the-ancie...
- just like how you ll become good at coding if you stopped using an llm (for most of it atleast)
- i am not saying this to trigger anyone. i am speaking from personal experience
- 6 months ago i stopped using calculators to add, subtract, multiply and my abilities have sharpened slowly and steadily
- initially i had trouble adding / subtracting 3 digit numbers
- i have slowly come to the point where i can do 6 digit numbers now without a calculator and pretty fast
- obviously i wont be able to prove that here because people ll think i am using tools to paste the answer but if were to meet in real life like ever, you would be absolutely blown away by how fast i can math
- was at the bank the other day, the bank manager had a mini heart attack when i calculated the 8.5% interest rate on the 1st year precisely before he could use his calculator
- seriously give it a try. start with 2 digit numbers addition / subtraction for the next entire week and slowly up your game. it ll help you immensely
>A spin metal finish is applied to the rounding and decimal selector levers, giving them a unique brilliance.
Naturally, they mean that the levers were faced off on a lathe, then maintaining that center, machined to size/shape --- nice touch given how the chrome plated plastic buttons on my PRS-505 e-book reader wore down after years of use.
I saw it and I thought this looks really nice and I could buy one and have it for life. Was expecting to spend up to $300 for it already, but $630 and limited edition means I will probably never be able to have one.
Another question, does anyone know of a website where they publish news about these sort of products. Looking at home appliances, or basic every day products but are well built to be point of luxury.
If anything one of my dreams / idea is to actually open an online store and only sell these gadgets.
Urushi is transformed by curing in a warm and humid environment to something that is food safe and not toxic - for example Japanese rice bowls. Then there are they myriad decorative techniques such as Rankaku - using quail egg shells for decoration.
I've recently seen the word "entanglement" in a completely different context. But Urushi entangles you in nature and your environment in way that is utterly breath taking. For example: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/modern-masters-...
[edit for grammar and clarity]
indestructible. small. solar (never out of battery; worked also with indoor electric light). contained all I needed for school (im from before the graphical calculator era).
I would buy it instantly, if it would be a scientific calculator, ideally with RPN.
Oh and i would have used a LCD with amber on black.
Revealing. I'll bet plenty still can't tell the difference (or don't care). I'm one. I've always used low-end laptops, mobiles, clothes, vehicles, anything else you can think of. I care that it functions (so I buy good brands and new) but everything else except price is a very secondary. When I read things like "rich, vivid colors" in a description of a screen, for example, or "clear, deep bass" for some earbuds, my eyes glaze over. Whatever. Does it work and will it last?, is what I want to know. I also don't care about (or even really notice) the taste of tap water. Water is water. All this must be related and I can't be the only one.
I have this for wine. I can tell an objectively disgusting wine but other than that I find most wines (I’m in Europe so it’s different) pretty decent. I’m working hard to keep it that way. I have friends who are almost always disappointed in their wine and have to pay a fortune for a bottle they’ll find decent. No thanks.
You may choose to reduce its meaning by not engaging or connecting with its story, but say you actually take the time to read through that page which bothers to talk about the tradition of the craft and even shows a picture of the artist, to still remain in that place is to deny it of any meaning behind all that was involved.
At that point, when you say something like that what others may hear is that you do not value the craftsmanship and artistry that accompany the product.
It’s okay not to like it and say it’s not for you, but to fail to recognize effort and deny craft is a bit rude, you don’t need to like it to be able to recognize it as something that exists in a different level than the status quo.
I’m not that way, but I wouldn’t put someone down who is that way.
I tend to think of myself as a realist, not a Philistine. I have Echizen laquer bowls I picked up in Japan and a headphone with Japanese cherry tree wood + Echizen, and while they're very beautiful to see in actual daylight, your PoV is not wrong either - from a functional PoV, they might as well be a more delicate plastic in terms of function.
Like any art that you might get, or something else you're obsessive about that other people don't give a rats ass about, it's all in the eye of the beholder.
Some people here will be rushing to buy the latter because the former is no longer available, even though they don't need a very average calculator in a premium case. (And if they did need a useful premium calculator, they'd buy an HP.)
When you spending $75,000 on a new suit, the tailor shouldn't be using a Dollar Store calculator.
That video is not online AFAICT, but there is another one about another artist, which includes some footage of an urushi workshop preparing the stuff, and her using it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeult7lZtbg
[1] https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/urushi-now-contemporary-ja...
I grew up playing in woods thick with the stuff and never had a problem. Then I had a hell of a reaction to it in high school, and it’s been cruel to me since then.
That did change me profoundly. I saw the world not as something to watch but to be in. That I could suffer (and ouch did I suffer) and survive and do something that I had no idea I could do. So how I see myself changed as well, but the profound thing that changed was me<-->world. How I and world relate to each other.
I seek out things like this. Not for thrills but because of the transformation. Some times this does not work out well. I kick myself because in my quest of transformation I find that I can utterly and completely fail. But again, there is a transformation there. I can utterly and completely fail and go on.
This is not marketing, this is me urging you to attempt to do something that is important enough to you that if you do it, your relationship to life, the world and yourself will be changed in good ways.
I mostly meant to say that sometimes it isn’t just about function (like this case), and then dismissing it by saying you don’t recognize the difference becomes alienation by choice.
https://www.wsj.com/style/eat-poison-ivy-oak-immunity-3207ec...
It's basically the optimistic interpretation of "buy cheap, buy twice":
When I consider getting into something I buy cheap first, the idea being that that is enough to get a feel ...
... then you buy the second time and don't cheap out. But this purchase is more informed and you really get to appreciate it more because you know the step up from the cheap thing.
And sometimes... maybe even most of the time... the cheap thing is just enough.
But sure, in general if you don't know what you are doing start cheap and treat it like a learning opportunity.
The real danger is in when you use shitty tools and think that because of that you are bad at something, so give up.
My personal story on this was when I hosed a laptop(don't disable usb when there are only usb devices) All the normal ways to fix it were not working so I went way out of my comfort zone and was going to try and reflash it the hard way with a chip programmer(It's already a brick I am not going to break it further) And I bought the cheapest sioc flashing kit I could find. and... nothing was working right, and because I have no idea what I am doing, does it just not work? do I have the wrong programmer? should I desolder the chip from the board? No clue. So it sat on the healing bench for a year. Then I stumbled on a forum thread complaining about cheap sioc clips, gathered my courage and bought a nice clip, tried again and it worked the first time. So on one level thanks Pomona electronics, your sioc clip was amazing, but the bigger lesson, I thought the task was just too unknowable and really I just had bad tools.
If you are learning a meaningfully new domain, you are bad at it.
If that causes you to give up, you are giving up on learning.
And in the case of your repair, the fact that the broken system sat on the bench for a year while you learned more meant that you did not give up.
Meaningful adult learning of new domains takes years. If something doesn't it either is not a new domain or the standard of performance is not an adult standard.
Finally, you could have bought the more expensive programmer first, but you might not have had the skill and knowledge and relevant experience to use it properly a year earlier...or to put it another way, you didn't have the direct experience to recognize the value of the post on which tool to use until after you had direct experience.
Buying tools twice or three or four times is just "the cost of doing business." You can't make an informed decision until you have experience.
On top of that, the canon of fine objects includes careful use and high maintenance…I know a guy who took offense at the suggestion he could drive his 911s in the rain.
And of course, you can buy a $45 keyboard twice and have a backup or one for your other computer, etc. Likewise, you can replace a $45 keyboard at 7pm on Tuesday at your local Walmart.
CalcGPT?
Elon Musk could, quite literally, feed the world with his net worth. But he chooses not to. I'm not sure what your point is. I don't what it's like to own a $75,000 suit, but I do know the tailor.
If you want to walk your talk, sell the computer you're using right now and give the money to the poor. Then surf HN from the public library.
"Put up, or shut up" as they say.
I’d be curious how you’d do on a hue test: https://www.xrite.com/hue-test
For me, each colored square is plainly, obviously different, and it is immediately obvious how they need to be sorted. But I also know people I’ve shown the test to who thought it was a trick - “there’s only 3 or 4 distinct colors, so how am I supposed to sort the same-colored squares?”
If one’s perception is particularly lossy, it makes sense that lower fidelity displays and audio will likely be indistinguishable from higher fidelity ones.
It's not like I can't tell the difference if I see hi- and low-fidelity products next to each other. It's just that I don't care enough to pay the price premium, and I don't mind using low-end equipment. I also feel less apprehension about losing or damaging it.
But the real issue here is surely simpler. To me, when I buy a screen (or whatever), I know in advance that (A) I will not be comparing it daily with another screen, and (B) it will be - easily - good enough for my purposes.
You might say I'm depending on other, more perfectionist, consumers to do the quality control. Fair enough.
They're very base people who go through life seeing only price tags, and tallying worth only in dollar figures. They act like life is a video game and money is the score.
It's a shallow life, devoid of the appreciation of all the wonderful things available, and in my estimation, barely living. It's just existing as a robot does.
Why spend vacation in Fiji when there are sunsets in Fresno, too?
I think it cuts both ways though — there are those who will exaggerate or outright fabricate subtle differences in order to justify their expensive purchases, and also those that will deny real differences because they think everyone is just doing the first thing.
Me neither until I moved to west Texas.
You are right about it cutting both ways though. I remember laptop shopping with a colleague in the past. They were trying to replace a barely functional laptop that they purchased because of its "design" with something they could get work done on. Unfortunately, they refused to acknowledge that functionality is an element of design. The whole experience was one of frustration.
This calculator appears to fit into a similar category. I'm sure it is a perfectly fine calculator, functionally speaking, if you are performing basic financial calculations. It isn't going to cut it if your working outside of that domain. When you consider that a calculator that is a tenth (or even a hundredth) of the price is going to offer a similar experience, I'm not even sure I would regard the nuances in its design a good thing. Yes, it says something about it's owner. I'm just not sure it says the right thing.
I didn't ask for it and I don't want it, hah.
I feel no need to convince others that they should try to find the difference.
I'm happy that, say, cheap wine doesn't give me the same mental-twitch.
But I should add (contrary to the rebuttal my provocative take attracted) that I am in fact very finely tuned to esthetics. As a photographer I'm obsessed with getting everything right (composition, light, texture, color, details) and routinely delete everything that doesn't make the cut.
It just seems obvious to me that in consumer products, most of the differences are pretty small in substantive terms. Big economic interests are at stake in amplifying them, and conjuring up demand through marketing, and generally manipulating us.
This is a great example because the ambiguity could go either way (e.g. spotify lossless FLAC vs vinyl will set off picky people on each side).
Sometimes different is just different, and each will be better to some.