It’s a nice little device but it falls a bit short in one key area: it lacks a CAS (Computer Algebra System) for symbolic calculations.
That functionality was available in an earlier release of the software (Epsilon) but it was at best rather rudimentary.
I’ve flashed Omega (a fork of Epsilon that preserves the rudimentary symbolic capabilities of earlier Epsilon) which also allows running third-party apps (including Xcas). You can check it out here: https://getomega.dev
I’m a strong believer in calculators and I understand the restriction on CAS systems in order to facilitate assessment in exam environments, but almost all calculators (including NumWorks) have Exam Mode settings anyway so… I don’t really see why not. It’s a critically important tool.
I don't think it primarily competes with CAS calculators, but rather with the TI84: graphing, statistics, table of function values, plus elementary programming in Python, but faster, and at a lower price.
CAS is the cherry on the cake, which you can enable by flashing another version of the OS. And as you probably know, it's not harder than upgrading the OS, so I'd say it's a pretty decent compromise.
Pretty much this. This calculator is meant to break the hegemony of TI in high schools by providing a (cheaper) alternative. You'll end up having to disable CAS in school anyway, sometimes you're not even allowed to have it, even if you can disable it.
What kind of calculator do you need for high schools anyway? Is there a reason why Casio isn't as popular? It's cheap, more responsive than TI (from my experience with TI-83).
That would probably depend on the school and the country (perhaps even the teacher). In my case they didn't even mention that there was an alternative, the TI-83 Plus was pretty much presented as a must have.
I’m somewhat aware that Texas Instruments enjoys some kind of quasi-monopoly on high school graphical calculators in the USA. However, when I was taking IB Maths Higher way back in 1999, I was using a Casio. Right after that I bought a HP 49G when I went to university. More recently I’ve been using an HP Prime (which I adore, but it’s a bit of an overkill in many ways) and the NumWorks with Epsilon (which is underwhelming in other ways, principally the CAS and lack thereof/need to use a separate and rather clunky interface for Xcas).
Indeed… throughout my whole school career (ending with my graduation in 1999, albeit from an international school featuring the International Baccalaureate) nobody ever gave a fraction of a dam about what calculator we had, as long as it didn’t sport ‘banned’ functionality or features (the latter including a blanket ban on any QWERTY-layout keyboard, which was very odd).
It also still treats RPN as a second-class citizen. You can import a front-end, flash a custom firmware, yada yada... In ten years maybe it'll be right.
But realistically, adult human beings who still want a graphing calculator want either a CAS and/or RPN.
It's ridiculous that buying a vintage HP-48GX is still the best way to get solid RPN on a calculator. The software environment was incredible.
You can accept the worse keyboard of the HP-50G for the increased speed and memory, sure, but there was a product category, it was almost perfect, and Carly Fiorina killed it. We have chips with 100,000 times the capabilities and yet we can't get a calculator with solid software and decent keyswitches at any price.
It’s a nice little device but it falls a bit short in one key area: it lacks a CAS (Computer Algebra System) for symbolic calculations.
That functionality was available in an earlier release of the software (Epsilon) but it was at best rather rudimentary.
I’ve flashed Omega (a fork of Epsilon that preserves the rudimentary symbolic capabilities of earlier Epsilon) which also allows running third-party apps (including Xcas). You can check it out here: https://getomega.dev
I’m a strong believer in calculators and I understand the restriction on CAS systems in order to facilitate assessment in exam environments, but almost all calculators (including NumWorks) have Exam Mode settings anyway so… I don’t really see why not. It’s a critically important tool.