Faster than a hand-held calculator?

A fried of mine recently gave me an old HP 35 calculator. For a geek like me, a true HP calculator is a kingly gift. I cleaned off some grime and replaced the internal batteries (a bit tricky but possible) and now have a working calculator.

While using it, I was impressed with the speed of its response. Even for the sophisticated operations, the answers are displayed immediately. (As in "before my finger is off the button".)

Thinking about the experience, I was impressed with this speed because I have been using various computers, and all have been sluggish. The computers are a varied lot and include a collection of operating systems. The hardware ranges from ten years old to just purchased, and the operating systems include Windows, OSX, and Linux.

All of the PCs, despite their youth or modern operating systems, are slow to respond. Launching a program on any of them (even Windows Explorer) sees a delay. (The Apple MacBook is particularly gratuitous with special effects of windows swooping up and down, but Windows 7 is not without its swoopiness.)

Yet the calculator, designed and built in the early 1970s, is faster than the computers of today. The HP 35 has a custom Mostek chip running at no better than 1MHz and probably slower than that, with perhaps 32 bytes of read/write memory and less than 1K of ROM.

Yet the calculator is much faster than the PC.

Comparing a hand-held calculator against a personal computer is awkward at best. The calculator is a specific-use device; the personal computer is a general-use device, capable of much more than arithmetic calculations. And if I run the calculator program on the PC, its response is just as fast as the calculator. (It's the launching of the program that takes time.)

I recognize than comparing the launching of programs against the operation of a calculator is unfair or even meaningless, much like comparing the taste of orange juice against the handling of a mini-van.

But there is a psychological effect here. I was impressed with the HP 35. I don't remember being impressed by a PC program in a long time. (The last PC software that impressed me was the setup program for the Apple Airport, and that was at least four years ago.)

Is it possible to create impressive software? Such software would have to be easy to use, have an elegant interface, and fast. (And correct.)

When building software, we tend to focus on the "correct" part of the requirements, and leave the "wow" factors out. The approach is utilitarian, and possibly efficient, but little more than that.