Slashdot Mirror
In Calculator Arms Race, Casio Fires Back: Color Touchscreen ClassPad
KermMartian writes "In what seems to be an accelerating arms race for graphing calculator supremacy between Texas Instruments and Casio, the underdog Casio has fired a return salvo to the recently-announced TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition. The new ClassPad fx-CP400 has a massive color touchscreen and a Matlab-esque CAS. Though not accepted on the SAT/ACT, will such a powerful device gain a strong following among engineers and professionals?"
Just stop playing around and get the real MATLAB on there.
The only thing that will make me switch from my HP-48.
Welcome to 2012 graphical calculators, nice of you to finally join us!
Why does one need a graphing calculator?
a) because it's actually required in an exam (didn't happen to me in my life).
b) because it makes life easier during an exam.
There's no math field work, where you need immediate mobility anymore. There's no need for a graphing calculator, which must not be used during exams.
What do these devices have that couldn't be implemented as an app on a general purpose smartphone or tablet?
There is still people using desk calculator!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I'm still confused as to why I'd ever want to replace my HP 48GX.
An awful lot of people live in the 3rd world. Why does Blackberry still sell well in Nigeria? Long battery life and easily replaceable batteries, along with low use of wireless data. These things are still major issues for an awful lot of people. North Americans have to get over the idea that everything has to be useful to them to have a point.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Do these support RPN, I am still using my old HP 32SII and while I have been looking for an upgrade no RPN is a deal breaker.
I just can not get used anymore to a 'normal' calculator
42
Buttons. It's touchscreen, but still has buttons 0-9 and others you'd expect on a calculator.
A proper tablet with Octave or SciLab would be much better and probably cheaper too.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It looks weird. Like a 2000ish color Palm with a PhoneKB attached. This device probably won't take the lead because it doesn't have enough of those flashy elaborated calculator buttons.
Seriously, the HP50G or simular devices simply looks cooler and has a more sturdy 'professional-looking' engineering-feel finish. That's my theory anyway.
But, as for smaller non-graphing calculators in general though, I have to say that Casio beats TI and the others hands down. I just bought the Casio FX86 DE Plus (it's the most powerfull permitted in exams at my College) and like it's predecessor the naturaly display (textbook style entry) along with the term-buffer, 7 variables and value table generation (the last step before grafing) are just plain awesome. Wouldn't want to go without it.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
...trying to outcompete each other without noticing that a 3rd party has created internal combustion engine.
The new ClassPad fx-CP400 has a massive color touchscreen ...
Define "Massive."
I want HP to reissue the HP-16C Most of us real programmers could use a proper multi number base calculator that is designed for CS and Digital EE.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The thing that defines a calculator useful, imho, is that you don't really need to care about its battery life and it starts up fast.
If you want something with a color touch screen, can't you just install a calculator app on your phone? What's the difference? Why do you need a specialized device for that?
Oh, be honest. Nothing will make you switch from your HP48. Oh, you might get one, but actually switch? Never!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The drama in the summary is just too much. This is more like a fight with toothpicks. Not a lot of people use these things.
Seriously, I think there may be a higher number of HP48gx users here than anywhere else. And we honestly can't see why you would need or want anything else. Naturally, that's because you probably don't need anything else. At least, not in a calculator.
Of course, I wonder what happens with the move towards mainstream W8 (i.e. x86) tablets, when you really will be able to get [insert favorite full featured math program here] on a 10" tablet that's 1/4" thick, runs 10 hours on a charge, and also runs everything else you use. I already emulate my HP48 on my ipad, but only because all the free calculators for that platform suck mightily. My HP48 stays at my desk. Plus, would you really spend $200 on a calculator if you already owned a $600-800 tablet that ran MATLAB? Yes, the calc is smaller...but the times I'm doing real work that needs heavy duty calcs or graphing AND I _don't_ have a tablet handy are diminishingly small.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"need"? no
But if the exam gives me the choice between using a basic "scientific" calculator and using a "graphic" calculator i'm going to pick the latter. Having enough display space to enter a long sum and then check it was entered correctly is a killer feature IMO (though modern scientific calculators are much better than the old ones in this regard). The graphing functions are mostly useful as a quick sanity check or to get a rough feel for the shape of a function you were about to do some analysis on.
Never used the programming features myself. Writing a program before the exam and taking it in was considered cheating (the calculators were supposed to have their memory reset before the exam to prevent this though in practice it never actually happened) and I don't think there would have been time to write one during the actual exam.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Seriously.
Where are the great programmer's calculators? My HP-16C allows me to work through essentially all the arithmetic binary operations (in decimal, hex & binary) and has been invaluable as a debug tool when the numbers just don't seem to be right.
Along with that are great feeling of keys (I hate my daughter's TI-83+ mushy keys) and nice solid plastic body. Oh, did I mention it takes 3x LR44 batteries that last 8+ YEARS?
In other news, kids have been told to get off my lawn, but the quality of my code has never been better,
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I have a maths and computing degree, and though I had a TI-85 that I loved, I couldn't really justify it on class use alone. Hell, I barely pulled that thing out in university at all, and it was mostly before that (A-levels in the UK) that we were told we "had" to have a graphing calculator.
For the number of times I used it academically, I probably could have drawn the graphs without any effort at all. For the number of times I wrote programs on it that any computer could run but which saved me work, that might have been worth the cost (i.e. it can actually be quicker to write a program to come to the answer than expect the calculator to show you the way by graphing a complex graph slowly).
Most of my use of it? Probably writing games in class. I had a pretty good Othello game with computer player that took me about a day to write, a decent minesweeper version, all written in BASIC (so slow, but the sort of thing you can knock up when you're bored).
In terms of computers in general, apart from the obvious things that need a computer anyway, the only other thing I ever used was Maple (like MathCAD, but a thousand times better at the time). Cost an absolute FORTUNE, so much that there's no way I could justify it even if it was amazing for double-checking your calculus, etc. when you get into higher functions. Gimme Maple on a tablet back at that time (never needed it since) and I would have broke your arm off for one.
But graphing / programmable calculators in general? It's like buying your kid a set of protactors or French curves for their first maths class. Sure, they might end up using them, but chances are they will never be *needed* and certainly not enough that it was worth buying them.
The true love of my life, was my Voyage 200 , she was there for me on the hard times, had an affair with the first color casio, but it felt wrong.
Coincidentally, I just spent a long time yesterday looking for a small (=pocketable) programmable calculator versatile enough to be used for simple general purpose 'applications', and found the Casio FX-9860g Slim. It would be perfect for me, but unfortunately is sold out about everywhere in the world. :(
I know there are plenty of older retro machines like that on Ebay, but these are from the 80s and I'd like to have something more recent and faster.
Does anyone know a similar device?
I'm also looking for programmable 'electronic organizer' with PC link, but these seem to have died out as well. (Please don't suggest a smartphone, I already have one and these devices just plain suck for almost everything---no battery life, too expensive, not enough keys.)
For the past year or two, I really haven't seen anyone use a calculator that wasn't on their phone. Most people don't even wear watches anymore, 'cause their phone shows the time. Until now, I had no clue that any companies were still doing serious business of calculators. I think they've seen their time, and fewer will be sold. I'm sure watch makers see their time is coming too. They may sell, but I can't think that it'll be a large market, or even half the market it was 5-10 years ago.
Matlab-esque CAS.
Matlab is a Numerical Computation System, not a Computer Algebra System
first read... what the fuck is $2 factorial? :)
69! done on a HP-34c eras calculator. The electricity alone while it chugged through tasks like this was noticable, to the point that the battery (two slighly-smaller-than-AA cells) warmed up.
Aside from non-technical advantages (e.g., being allowed to use particular ones in exames), in general for graphing (and just plain scientific, engineering, or financial) calculators, a big plus is a physical keyboard optimized for the particular use. That's actually a weak point of this new Casio device (which seems to have very few keys other than the numeric keys), so I doubt it will catch on, but specialty calculators in general still have advantages, though general purpose devices will often be good enough for most users.
submitter asks "Though not accepted on the SAT/ACT, will such a powerful device gain a strong following among engineers and professionals?" If /not accepted/ is because it gets wrong answers;) then yes, but if not accepted because it makes it too easy to get answers then, hell yes, it gets a following.
There could be other considerations such as price I suppose
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
On Android, for example, and for free, there's Mathmatiz and Addi, both of which have a semi-matlabish language. even better, someone has compiled R for Android.
So, other than meeting the bloody SAT rules, why bother with a calculator when a tablet or "smartphone" (aka small tablet with a cellphone chip in it) will do a hell of a lot more?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I would definitely buy a next generation HP calculator if it made good use of such an enhanced display. With RPN natch.
$$4? :-)
Make that $$2, even. Writing on a Friday evening is challenging.
. . . The other is identify useless data. For instance, "Three customers give the $10 they each owe to their waiter. His boss hands $5 back to the waiter, saying it's on the house because they're regulars. The waiter pockets $2 as a tip, and gives $1 back to each customer. How much did each customer pay? Isn't it weird that 3 * $9 + $2 != 3 * $10?
This may be the first time I've been presented with that problem. It first struck me as a paradox like the one where I count my fingers forward from 1 on one hand and backward from 10 on the other, then add 5+6=11 to say I have eleven fingers. After scribbling a bit here's what I've come up with:
Net change of money:
Owner: +$25
Waiter: +$2
Cust1: -$9
Cust2: -$9
Cust3: -$9
This all balances out, the sum of those values is zero (+27-27=0). Adding the +$2 to the -$27 to get $29 is wrong, and not (in my opinion) a problem with useless data but instead with sloppy equation prep. The other distraction is comparing it to the $30 they all paid originally; a better question seems to be "Where did the $5 change go?" The answer to that is obvious, $2 went to the Waiter, $3 to the customers. The paradox all seems to come from the confusion of money paid vs money refunded and not keeping signs straight.
Sorry if I'm coming across as a wet blanket here! Incidentally, my wife hates it when I get all mathy on stuff like this; she'll have the right answers to household budget questions by the time I've finished figuring out which columns to put things in. I just like clearly understanding why my math works out right instead of going on my gut; it keeps me from asking questions like the one posed in your paradox =)
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Why would anyone buy a graphing calculator when a tablet is 1/3 the price for so much more hardware, and can have some equivalent calculator software installed for a dollar or two?
This is a market propped up by the expectations of out of date teachers. These devices have no natural sales anymore.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Seriously? I didn't even have my TI-92 until my second semester of college. You think I bought it with any consideration of the SATs?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I got my programmable Casio on the grounds of us having to have a scientific calculator in school. Then I learned it wasn't allowed for exams because of being programmable. Well, what did I do, I learned to use a slide rule, got one (I inherited it after another engineer in my family - the surviving didn't use it at all) and used it for the last two years of high school, to the point of passing my final exams with it, and a $2 calculator to do the sums.
I guess that's the way to deal with disallowed kit fuckery.
Oh, be honest. Nothing will make you switch from your HP48.
Not in my case. Although I still much prefer RPN, my HP48GX proved to be just too unreliable. It kept throwing tantrums during examinations and other assessments through my first year at university, and I didn't need the stress, so I ended up getting rid of it in favour of a TI-89 which is faster, more powerful and 100% reliable.
However, since I no longer usually need to carry a calculator around, I have the RealCalc app on my phone which gives me RPN again, though I have to do without the nice clicky keys and the big fat "Enter" button positioned just where the index finger can find it...