15 replies to this topic

[mindwaves]

Hi everyone,

I have owned a lot of Casio scientific and graphing calculators over the years, and I was thinking of getting the ClassPad just to "stay on top" of technology, but I am a bit concerned about the lack of dedicated buttons on the ClassPad. It seems to be lacking them and what I mean is a dedicated sine, consine, log, and the such. Is it a nuisnace to use the stylus to press the coresponding keys on the screen or would using the buttons be faster? I am all for the more power and capabilites, but I am afraid that the stylus will slow me down. Thanks.

[mindwaves]

Anyone who has a ClassPad care to comment? Everyone else, what do you think?

[CrimsonCasio]

the only person with a classpad just moved and cant get on for a while... if you wait a about a week I will have one and I'll make a comment

[Casto Productions]

I had the same fear about using the stylus, one of many reasons I have not bought the classpad, and I probably will not get it for that and some other concerns. Like the fact that none of the updates from the AFX seem to work for the classpad and other concerns. Just my 2 cents.

[Brazzucko]

Well guys be honest whit me, if one guy have one AFX, he have to buy one ClassPad, or wait for they AFX be a ?obsolete? calculator, for example if I have one CFX and want to buy a new one, of course the ClassPad it?s one great choice?..

I say that because the ClassPad it?s a expensive Calculator, of course they are great, but for ho has one AFX, I thing that they have ( for the moment ) a great calculator too..

[BiTwhise]

I only have a few minutes online so I'll make it short

The on-screen keyboard is not a problem
It's a bit slower than a physical one, but considering that you have several keyboards to chose from for different purposes you get pretty fast access to the most common functions, commands and tools

Drag and drop is very nice as well

Only real down side I can see is the contrast, it's a bit low

[AlephMobius]

Compared to the AFX menu based programming system do you think you can program as fast or faster on the ClassPad?

[CrimsonCasio]

Hi everyone,

I have owned a lot of Casio scientific and graphing calculators over the years, and I was thinking of getting the ClassPad just to "stay on top" of technology, but I am a bit concerned about the lack of dedicated buttons on the ClassPad.  It seems to be lacking them and what I mean is a dedicated sine, consine, log, and the such.  Is it a nuisnace to use the stylus to press the coresponding keys on the screen or would using the buttons be faster? I am all for the more power and capabilites, but I am afraid that the stylus will slow me down.  Thanks.

hello, I just got my classpad yesterday and here are a few things I've knoticed: the stylus does slightly slow down finding things, but this will probably lessen after using it for a time, just like it becomes easyer to find buttons on normal calcs. in additon the stylus makes just about everything else faster.

on the basic language:
At first I was dissapointed by the new features: commpressing a file does not make it faster, just uneditable, there is no way to set the size or location of the split screens, ect... but then I relized I was looking at things form the perspective of a AFX/CFX programmer, the programs on the Classpad can't be made thinking like that because they have entirely diffrent strengths and I was trying to exploit entirely the wrong aspects of the language. Heres what I found: almost all types of selection using getkey or ? can be eliminated using the stylus. circles now appear instantly, no more waiting for them to draw. all forms of output are now instant, the text doent type out, it just appears. by using commands in a percice order you can control the positioning of the windows: ClrText:Cls causes the text screen to be on the bottom with the graph on top, Cls:ClrText does the oppisite. Locate is now poisitioned by pixels. GetKey can now return the key that breaks the programs without stoping execution. And lots more (gimme a break, I've only had the thing for a day)

[Brazzucko]

Very cool, so now ( on the ClassPad ) we have reasons to create BASIC programs ( whiteout the limitation of the CFX and AFX )....

[mindwaves]

Thank you for everyone who replied. I think that I am going to hold off buying the ClassPad however unitl a revision is made or the AFX 3.0 is releaesd (whenever that is). My AFX 2.0 still works fine and the ClassPad offers no complelling reason for me to upgrade. I used to program my 7770, 9850, 9850+, and AFX, but I haven't programmmed in a while so the new programming opportunities do not intrigue me much.

[CrimsonCasio]

one bad thing I've noticed is that the string operations dont seem to work on variables, I think I'm just doing it wrong because something like that is to stupid even for casio.

[AlephMobius]

>I think that I am going to hold off buying the ClassPad however unitl a revision is made or the AFX 3.0 is releaesd

Do you think that CASIO will release another traditional style graphing calc (AFX 3.0)? I think things are all going towards this PDA style interface. I would like to stay with the traditional style but if I do get a newer model I want to see what TI and HP come out with before I buy one. TI has released this V200 (which isnt anything new at all just a slightly modified and over-hyped TI-92 which has been out for years) and I have heard some believable rumors about an HP-49+ on the HP boards so maybe it isnt all going to a stylus based system. Do you think that HP would attempt a new calc of this style even considering its unsuccessful Xpander?

[2072]

I thought HP has stopped its calc developpement... Are they building new calculators ?

[Killer83Z]

http://www.rskey.org...odel=HP Xpander

[AlephMobius]

Go to Google groups and check out comp.sys.hp48. They ussually always have a post about the supposed "HP-49g+". If not go back a few pages, you should have no problem finding an active thread from the last week. Some are stuff like "In the new HP-58g+++ Platinum I want a 4ghz processer and a 256 color screen", forget about that. Im talking about the guys that say they have talked to HP retailers who say a model which is an improvment on the HP-49g is coming out later this year. These guys may be fibbing as much as the ones that say the next calc will have 802.11b and 64mb of ram but some of this looks pretty credible. I will try to find you some links so you dont have to search through the archive.

[TomL_12953]

About string operations: They're implemented as subprograms rather than functions. What this means is that they can't appear in-line as TI-89 string functions do. Examples:

You can do this on the 89:

140 -> sc
Disp "You scored " & string(sc) & " points"

This will print "You scored 140 points"

On the CP 300, you have to do this:

140 => sc
ExpToStr sc, temp
StrJoin "You scored ",temp,temp
StrJoin temp," points",temp
Print temp

Quite a bit more work!

Tom Lake