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Casio Unveils New Color Screen Graphing Calculator
An anonymous reader writes "As reported by hobbyist calculator programmers, Casio has recently unveiled new graphing calculator models, the Casio fx-CG10/20 series, less than a year after Texas Instruments released the TI-Nspire Touchpad. The calculators features a 65536 colors screen (16-bit) with a resolution of 384x216 pixels, 16 MB of Flash memory (10 available for the user) and 140 hours of battery life. The calculators will retail starting at $129.99. Although Casio's new calculator official page have limited information about the calculator programming capabilities and processor speed, could this eventually mark the end of TI's reign in North American schools?"
http://xkcd.com/768/
I don't understand the need for such fancy calculators for students. I'm sure there are some professionals that might like to have it, but I used a TI-83 through all high school and college and never found something you couldn't make it do that you needed.
What is the purpose of making these calculators with color screens rather than just making simpler but still advanced graphing calculators cheaper?
I'm not trying to be overly critical - maybe a tad skeptical.
This is definitely *cool*. What's the point in this, though? I'm a programmer/developer, but I've never been a hardcore "programmer" or user of calculators. As long as I can do some basic graphing and standard 4-function stuff, most calculators make me super happy.
The first immediate con I can see of this is...usability. If I'm colourblind - I'm not going to be very thrilled about this.
The first immediate pro I can see of this is.....help me out here.
Sure, this is cool, but why do I want to pay $130 for a color model when I can get a standard monochrome one for $50ish?
So how much DRM and anti-modification features did they manage to pack into this device for $129.99?
They've made a killing over the last 12 years selling hardware that is essentially minor improvements to their existing calculators. The differences between my TI-89 and the current TI-89s are minor, even with 12 years between them. Combine that with how TI-centric some math textbooks tend to be, and they've got the market locked down pretty tight.
Although, having colors would make it easier to differentiate plots when doing several at one time.
But does it run Linux? OpenWRT runs easily in 16MB of RAM. How fast is the processor? And can we hack it?
I can't tell. Limited information, for sure.
It's more expensive and less versatile than an iPod touch, or hell, even my old Zaurus from a decade ago.
The only reason that TI does so well, is that schoolteachers are pretty much trained in on it and refuse to use newer technology. A kid should be able to use whatever device he or she wants, as long as it has the requisite functionality.
Imagine, if when you took your driving tests, they only allowed VW Beetles. Now, you have to buy a Beetle to pass your driving test. Sure, there is a "market" for Camrys, but you will still need your own Beetle when the behind the wheel test comes. Car companies would scream bloody murder, that there was a totally artificial market created for Beetles, and that the lack of competition was keeping everybody invested in 1938 technology.
TI's calculator stranglehold sickens me. It should sicken everybody who thinks that competition in a market leads to better products.
But it will probably result in a color-screen nSpire sooner than we might otherwise have seen one. Which is A Good Thing (tm) - some of the graphing uses of my nSpire would be much nicer with color to distinguish the plots.
Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
How much faster will it run Doom?
Sharp is still selling the compet printing calculators, which should be enough for most K-12 students and store clerks. Buying more calculator than you need is for suckers
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
RPN ftw
Everyone who went through a hardcore engineering program knows that RPN beats the hell out of normal algebraic calculators for doing... just about anything.
But it seems that everything has been moving away from RPN, to the extent that non-RPN calcs are even required in many schools, in spite of the superiority of RPN.
Is this another case of dumbing down our society to the least common denominator? Is anyone going through science classes at high school or univ level even using RPN calculators any more?
will be on the Android/iPhone/whatever. It won't be a dedicated device imo. Especially as these color screens (if non e-ink) need to be charged daily/weekly instead of yearly.
And yes, I know about TI's being more desirable for school for perceived lack of cheating. But many users are past school where that is necessary. Although many math teachers I know are switching to open book tests because they figure if they ask indepth questions, you'd have to know the material and not merely regurgitate it to pass, and also because working in the real world is open book.
This is incredible. I can't wait until the vector graphics porn converter comes out.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This story makes me miss my Hewlett Packard calculator, an HP-41cx (with accessories of a mag card reader and a printer). When I studied engineering, there were two broad groupings of calculator recommended, especially when you got to classes on circuit theory: Some Texas Instruments grouping I don't remember, and the HP-41 series. Literally the recommendation was use one or the other, or you will likely fail this class due to lack of computation speed on exams.
Hewlett Packard seems to have become irrelevant in the marketplace. Very sad, long live RPN!
That left just Texas Instruments for the serious calculators that aren't full-on computers.
Sure, Casio had "scientific calculators", but they just weren't quite up to the demands back in the eighties (yes, I'm old).
It's nice to see this market getting another player, although in my mind "color graphing" is a gimmick, not a real feature!
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
No wireless. Less space than a TI. Lame.
Somehow I doubt that Casio officially unveiled it with a forum post.
And if we did have to link to a forum post (for some unknown reason) instead of something more official, this would have been better anyway...
Official website: http://www.casioeducation.com/prizm
edu.casio.com: http://edu.casio.com/products/cg_series/fxcg10_20
Manual download: http://edu.casio.com/products/cg_series/data/fxcg10_20_E.pdf
Models: fx-CG 10*/20
* North America only
Some of the new features:
- High-resolution color display (384*216 pixels with 2^16 colors)
- USB 2.0 support
- 16 MB flash memory
- Picture Plot functionality
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Those of us fortunate to own one (as opposed to merely borrowing one from the school) often go our first introduction to programming through the TIs. I personally started a collection of digital art on mine which I then used a cable to offload to PC, where it wasn't as impressive, but that foreshadowed how I would spend the next few years in calc labs - making cool 3D objects instead of doing my homework. No, students don't *need* anything this fancy. But if it encourages kids to start coding on their own, what's the harm?
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
casio released a color screen graphing calculator in the 90s... it had just come out when i was shopping and ended up buying a TI-85... it was junk.
Please? "Break" is what happens when you accelerate a manual to 90 in 5th and then engage reverse and drop the clutch. Loss of way follows, certainly, but not in a good way. "Brake" is the thing next to the accelerator. You did it twice, so it wasn't an accidental typo.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You know what I would personally like to see? I would love to see some kind of touch screen tablet computing pad (something like the iPad, or Galaxy tablet, or whatever) that had a mathematics and scientific data centric focus. It would be sweet to see a product like that hit the market. I would want it to come preloaded with a good data and simulation language (something like Matlab/Simulink or Scilab/XCOS). I would want it to come preloaded with some handy mathematical functions typically found in TI calculators (matrix operations, statistics plotting, solving of symbolic integrals and derivatives). Hell, if it had WiFi access even better. For bonus points add on an uber unit conversion program with a very clean simple interface.
I don't know, maybe something like this already exists, but if it does I haven't heard about it. If any 'dotters know of one, I would love to see a link. I would happily fork over some cash for a small computing platform like this that I could carry around in my back pocket (I don't want to have to find a way to strap another satchel to my body when riding my motorcycle). Finally, making it truly rugged and badass and able to survive getting dropped in water and sand would be great. Why won't a company develop an engineer/scientist specific tablet that could be used in a multitude of environments. It would be the ultimate geek multi-tool!
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
How can it be a serious calculator without RPN? Any idea if it will be programmable enough to implement RPN? Maybe with an alternate boot ROM?
As a teacher who taught math in the public school system with class sets of TI's and Casio's, I'd say unless they've done something to make the Casio's less fragile, I doubt TI has much to worry about. I'd cringe when a Casio fell to the ground, as usually there'd be nothing left to work with (and I'd have to fight with parents to enforce the technology contract they signed.) With TI's, I've had the same class set for about six years, and I've replaced about four of them - two to theft, and two to students intentionally breaking screens. Just to clarify, I do teach math in Texas, so I might have a conflict of interest. But I don't.
...in COLOR!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Get out of Randal's head Casio!
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I think Brett Favre learned to count to 21 on his cell phone.
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
slashdotted again!
One answer that maybe nobody else will come up with: Easy UI.
I just find it a lot faster and easier to punch up some calculations on a device that has a whole mess of purpose-built buttons on the front of it, rather than trying to do the same with a standard keyboard that was never intended for scientific calculation. You can write up programs and key them to buttons, too.
Disclaimer: I use an HP 50g. Your experience with a TI or Casio calculator may vary. RPN, baby.
Breakfast served all day!
I don't get it. We have traded battery life from Nokia and Ericson cell phones pulling a week on a single charge to iPhone barely doing a day.
I wouldn't say I understand, but I can see dudes showing of his shiny iPhone to compensate for other body parts, good, charge that iPhone every night.
These calculators on the other hand are meant for technical individuals; engineers, architects and the like. I personally would not buy this, it seems it has a display (I can only guess) that will kill the battery in a day or so, requiring replacement or a recharge.
Through my 4 years of engineering, I changed the battery maybe once. It was a rather high end graphics calculator for its time, abused and used much, this was 94-98. I doubt this does any better maths.
Are people really willing to trade durability in terms of battery life for gimmick features like full color display that looks pretty?
You'd think by now we'd not need dedicated graphing calculators and simply use emulators on our phones, computers, laptops, tablets or any number of devices we already own with more than ample memory and processing power....
Handheld calculators have consistently disappointed me. Those that graph do so poorly. Those with complex functions make them all but impossible to use. Apart from statistics, there is not the slightest whiff of anything resembling a special function of any kind, and anything more advanced that acosh is basically nonexistant. Is it too much to ask for a bessel function to be built in somewhere?
Some machines have matrix support, but it's generally shockingly poor sometimes restricted to 3x3 matrices and generally lacking anything above an inversion operation--if that. A lot waste resources on pie chart/spreadsheet software which is wasted on business and accounting students who are just going to end up using excel anyway; The addition of image support on some recent models simply adds insult to injury on this front.
I could go on for hours, but I'll just add the one item that bothers me the most.
Complex Numbers.
It's 2010. People have mp3 players with more computing power that the Cray-1. Is it too much to ask that scientific calculators support complex numbers natively? There are still some models with over 500 functions and no complex number support! Even those models which do generally make i all but inaccessible; necessitating at best a second function shift and at worst a mode change to input or sometimes even view this most elementary of entities. Is it really so much to ask--in the 21st century--that when I input sqrt(-1) into my calculator that I get something other than MATH ERROR. There's no math error or even a maths error. There's a calculator error for having put in a square root function without considering complex numbers!!
Going back to the main story: Curved keyboard designs are appalling and Casio need to get with the program and make a better "=/ANS" button make their bracket buttons larger a la Sharp and TI. In conclusion I'd like to buy at least one calculator before I die that was a substantial improvement on the one I purchased in 1997.
May the Maths Be with you!
I have a cell phone that will run a java web server that can serve an java server-side calculator application with arbitrary precision math library that will do almost as much as that calculator, color never being a question, which I could serve to anyone in the room with a wap browser. Graphing? Ha, not an issue. The same phone has a fine native-code multi-notation (including scientific) calculator. I have a calculator application on my pcs, two running linux and two running windows 7. I have two fine scientific ti calculators sitting in drawers somewhere around the house.
I probably won't be looking to make this purchase in this lifetime.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The fancy calculator I had when I was a kid (late 80's) was the size of a phone in 2010. Today's calculators have nothing like the processing power of a phone that costs roughly the same, yet they are now the size of ancient mobile phones. I don't get it.
Go Casio! I question why the TI-83 floats around at a $100, but I know the answer... $$$ pure profit for something everyone is so familiar with. GOD JUST GIVE IT A BACK LIGHT!
I did plan to mod my original TI-83 with some LEDs at the top. There is just enough space between the plastic, and screen that you couldn't do with the PLUS version.
An artificial market for underpowered devices has been created
Not really artificial. Worried about cheating, I'd guess. It wouldn't be too difficult with a laptop to hook up through a cell phone modem in your final and simply transmit the problems to a grad student friend.
You *want* an underpowered device. It guarantees that it's the student coming up with the answers. And for my two cents, even this Casio is overpowered for the task. First thing I thought when I saw those graphic overlay graphs is that it would be trivial to make crib sheets and scan them into the thing. Plus it probably has an ARM processor in it, which means eventually Linux will be running on it. Once you manage that, all bets are off. Some whacko will port Maxima to it and that'll be that.
Maybe I'm getting to that "get off my lawn" age, but if you study and have a 2 dollar calculator that can do trig...you really shouldn't need much of anything else.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Actually I still have mine, it still works, and I bought it circa 1994. However, recently I downloaded a emulator for iPhone. All my RPN needs now on my phone. Not that I do any engineering or scientific calculations, but I love the stack for calculating large totals.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
My son was required to purchase one of the N-Spire calculators, and I thought I would have been more than happy to pay $30-$50.00 bucks for an Android or iPhone version that had the same functionality. There are some fabulous calculators on the Android, but none that I have see that compare to this N-Spire devices. What a fabulous way to save money if they had the software version of this. Oh well, one day...
I purchased one of these back in college in 1997: http://www.amazon.com/Casio-Color-Graphic-Calculator/dp/B00000JMS3
I used mine with a decent amount of success. It wasn't as easy to program as my TI had been, but the color really helped with graphing. Overall, though, the calculator flopped. Why? Because the teachers all have TI's, your fellow students all have TI's, and most importantly, the vast majority of textbooks cover TI's (and Excel in many cases...but no Casio). So I had no one to trade programs with or ask questions of or link up to. I was on my own.
Flash-forward to today. Sure, 65K colors beats the hell out of 4, but the fundamental problem of momentum is still there (worse, in fact). And for a calculator, color simply wasn't enough back then to justify enduring the challenges of going it alone. Has that changed? I don't think it has. There's only so many ways you can shade the area between two plots....
If TI is smart, though, it will be watching. And if enough people think color's time has come on the calculator, it will be ready to pounce *before* the textbooks and teachers (which tend to have a much larger inertia than individual students) abandon ship.
Texas Instruments is just making a console with a non-removable cartridge but more buttons. That is all.
The originaly Gameboy of 1993 used a TI-80, so does a modern Texass Instruments calculator in 2010. They, TI, could have created a Gameboy cartridge with a PS2 port on it to use a full-on Keyboard in their Calculator firmware for $100 and they would have sold more and totally increased their profit margin, and Nintendo would have made absolutely certain that their product line throughout Gameboy Adbance to DS to whatever else would always be backwards compatible to that original Gameboy. But instead, we get something like an expensive Gameboy sold for 20 Years. Nintendo originally sold their Gameboy with a free game and a power supply for $110, but TI's calculator doesn't even come with a power supply.
Great...just great. The all-Amerikkkan nightmare on Hellm street.
I think we benefit as a society when we have some common sense of history
Then why don't U.S. schools teach the history of neighboring countries? A Michigan resident is more likely to learn about Texas than Ontario, even though Ontario is much closer.
literature
Who decides what literature gets onto the required reading list? For example, a lot of people appear to consider The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald to be overrated, yet it gets on the required reading list and not Gadsby: Champion of Youth by Ernest Vincent Wright. Six tragedies by William Shakespeare get on, along with none of his comedies and none of his contemporaries' plays.
Thats because the top end calculators are not just for performing arithmetic calculations: they are equivalent of a cut down version of Maple or Mathematica. However much does one of those application cost on the PC?
It costs seven times zip, which still equals zip.
Yes, Maxima costs the same as 7-Zip. Both are free software under a GNU license.
If they have mental problems they need additional help [...] The education system does need many changes, but being individually tailored to each student is not how.
As more and more K-12 students are diagnosed with mental disabilities, more and more will end up with an IEP. If IEPs are not the answer, as your comment appears to indicate, what is?
Despite the fact that I use and praise their G-shock watches (I've using one for more than 10 years) I have to recognize that Casio calculator technology is more focused in ease of use than in serious use. Programming a Casio graphic calculator is a nigthmare because they don't have a TRUE programming language, user-defined variables are not allowed, and even worst, most of the functions are not available for calling as instructions. That's why I switched to HP calculators long time ago, the learning curve is step, but you can obtain what you want.
Could be useful ...
I own a previous color model from Casio, the CFX-9800G (along with ... gee, about 20 others). That one only had 3 colors (orange, green and blue) and was sort of a kludge in that regard. You had to use your imagination sometimes to call them orange and green, but the blue was decent.
When I was teaching 20 years ago Casio calculators had too many limitations for me to recommend them to my students. The recent models seem to have removed most of those, and even added some interesting features. I do have to wonder though, would we be further ahead with a larger touchscreen and put half the keys (or maybe all of them) onto the touchscreen. Most smartphones have enough processing power and resolution that with the right software they could do everything this does and more ...
A calculator without RPN is like a computer that only runs Windows.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Sequential Gearboxes...? You lose.
1. Slide Rules, the 31337 engineering tool, for old school engineers
2. HP Graphing Calculators, early versions built like tanks, for people who need a computer in a pocket form factor, and need accurate calculations. New models do everything, while maintaining backwards compatibility.
3. Ti Graphing Calculators, for gamers and amateur tinkerers
4. Casio Graphing Calculators, for people who can't count past 10 without taking off their shoes
Maybe we're just spoiled by technology, but I can buy a 8 gigabyte iPod with touchscreen for $150 and they're offering a 16 megabyte calculator with "color" for $130?
Why not just put a graphing calculator on a iphone or ipod touch and be done with it? Now you have 600+ mhz and a 4" color touchscreen
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
that's why I don't memorize things anymore. For example, I always have my multiplication table next to me, because having memorized things like 8x7 would have cost me valuable memory space in my brain.
I used to carry around my whole encyclopedia of books with me, in case someone asked me something unexpected, such as "how much thicker do appliance cables need to be in the US compared to Europe". Of course I first need to look-up who is this guy "Europe", but by having all books next to me I can eventually figure it out.
I'm evaluating not memorizing my password anymore either. I will write them down or have them tattoo on my arm. But this IT bastards make me change it periodically, and I'm running out of real-state here. They must have a private deal with the tattoo studio. Damn it, I didn't find such a business model in any of my books. Otherwise I'd be rich by now and would be enjoying the Caribbean instead of reading slashdot.
I used a Casio calculator back in the 80's. The problem then was that Casio used a different logic that TI and nobody but myself and my son, who taught me, knew how to work the thing.
The Casio was always cheaper to buy but used 7 batteries which made it expensive to use.
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
If I need to simplify a huge mess of an equation that I don't want to do myself, my first stop is my TI-89, then Maple, and then by hand. My TI-89 does simplification better than Maple 9/10 times. I don't know why, but it does.
Additionally, my TI-89 supports units, which makes Physics class a lot faster.
And lastly, my TI-89 has pretty print and is symbolic, which makes looking at equations and their solutions that much better.
Right, you need a bag.
If you're in school, you already have one.
where's the cost of that mathematica licence you need to give it the same functionality in your budget?
Besides, TI-83/84 and TI-85/86 don't have algebra; all they have are graphing and programmability. If you're looking for something like Derive on an 89, a CAS license costs seven times zip, as I explained in another comment.
You're a satisfied Pirate Bay customer, I take it?
Nope, I made the choice of the GNU generation.
Now you have 600+ mhz and a 4" color touchscreen
How long does the battery last? How many exam rooms do you think you'll be allowed to take your wireless device (complete with browser) into? Or a machine into that's capable of storing and displaying an essentially arbitrary number of ebooks, text documents, etc? Or running custom-written software specific to solving the sorts of problems you're going to be tested on?
I'm all for high-tech, highly-capable machines, but their lower-tech, less-capable (but still capable) brethren have a place too.
As for the cost, go look at the prices of computer components; just because "good" costs $X, doesn't mean "mediocre" is free.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
All these calculators are expensive, targetted devices. The hardware keys are important. However they're so far behind, especially considering smartphones have made small displays cheap and excellent, and all-in-one ARM SoCs cheap too. TI made the move from Z80 and 68000 to ARM finally...
C'mon. A graphing calculator with an e-ink display (480x320) and a slim form factor would be very desirable. And it should be cheap to boot (under $100). You can probably already replicate all of the functions of the graphing calculators on an iPod Touch with a few cheap downloads from iTunes... $1.99 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/graphing-calculator/id289940142?mt=8 or Free http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/free-graphing-calculator/id378009553?mt=8
Are there a lot of students posting on this thread, or do that many people really still use calculators?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Purple doesn't exist...
It's sort of true actually. Unlike our other colors purple isn't a "wavelength of purple light". Probably caused by cross talk in our eyes.
...and is a conspiracy against the colorblind
Shit, he's on to us!
And I thought math was black and white. Not anymore, apparently.
Finally, I can jack off in Math class.
I have a graphing calculator app on my Ipod. It's awesome. My teachers are mildly excited by the fact that I'd install an app related to mathematics, but not so thrilled about letting students use their Itouch (read, essentially mini-laptops) during class.
It's less about the specific book and more about learning about literature, the techniques authors use to create a certain atmosphere or develop a character.
A teacher who wants to teach a narrative design pattern could visit the TVTropes.org page for this pattern, choose several works with examples, and then let each student review any of them. And why aren't other narrative media, such as film and television, taught to the same extent as novels?
I remember reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles back in school and learning what a pathetic fallacy is.
You don't need a novel to teach a point of logic; you can do that with a short story.
The book itself was rubbish IMHO
Then why aren't high school literature teachers more up-front about the required novels being garbage, especially if a novel comes with the legal encumbrance of having been first published after 1922 and therefore unavailable on Gutenberg?