See this!
http://www.omnimaga.org/general-discussion/the-girl-of-our-dreams-ti-nspire-cx-cas-costume!/

What the heck?

(Btw it's not me. Not sure why someone would try to impersonate me and praise the Nspire under my name )

Probably the NSA or perhaps TI? :-)

To get back to the subject,

Personally I'm a little disappointed with my TI Nspire CX CAS.

I guess I should have known better, I did try it for some hours in the windows emulator. But the win emulator did hide two of the major flaws:

1. I used my mouse, not the calculators lacking trackpad

2. the stupid colour of "selected text", invisible!

The calculator is by no means "bad" or subpar, but not as great as I had wished.

Since I don't want to buy 3 calculators this spring, I'm trying to decide between the Classpad II and Prime. So let's keep the thread going!

Happy Friday everyone!

Do you mean the ClassPad II? Because I think the topic starter wants some game programmability too, which is a serious issue on the FX-cp400 (extremely slow Basic language compared to Nspire Lua and HP PPL). If you mean the Casio PRIZM (FX-cg10/20), then that has some better programmability (LuaZM, SH4 assembly and C, although all of them can only be done on the computer). The ClassPad II is also very expensive unless you live in Canada.

I meant the Casio classpad. I have the 330 Plus. The Casio fx CP400 seems to be about the same calculator but with colour display.

Since the OP mentioned he was going to use the calculator for School, this is why I mentioned the Classpad. I think it (if allowed) is the best calculator for school usage - disregarding games and coding. Let me tell why:

____HP Prime__________
From my experience in the PC-emulator and what I've read this product is a little "rough around the edges". It has diffuse error messages. In a situation where your exam results determine the next semesters student financing you can't have your calculator fail on you or be confusing. Adding to this, why no option for multi line editing? A long math expression results in really bad screen area utilization, a thin line - forcing scrolling. The HP 48 had multi line editing, and even an option to let the 1st stack item to show itself on multi lines! This might be a fun coding calculator, but from what I've seen this far, it's not the best school calculator.


______TI-Nspire CX CAS__________
I recently bought this calculator and have given it quite some time to learn it.
Major complaints:
* The user experienced leaves me feeling constrained. Locked in. Not pleasant. Like using windows with a keyboard and bad trackpad and then some (cryptic shortcuts).
* With the 3.6 software the freaking indication (colour) of what is selected is almost invisible against the white background (from a ordinary users viewpoint). Since "show selected text" is also used when you backspace editing math expressions this is very irritating. Doesn't TI bother to test their new software on users?
* Three types of menus in most given situations. doc\/, menu and ctrl-menu. Why not four .... ? ....
* no easy way to view and manage variables
* Requires you to memorize stupid shortcuts (se home/end below + many more) to get around a flawed (?) user interface with any kind of flow. This is so much worse than the TI-89.

Minor complaints:
* too small buttons for +-*/
* ctrl 7 & 1 for home and end, why?
* should have laplace transforms (my exams require "clean" calculator)
* you can't do 1/matrix, only matrix^(-1)...

The best thing I can say of the CX CAS is that it looks good and has a great undo functionality, and it can do multi line editing if you copy paste into notes page.

Having a TI-89 that I really like, I must say that the TI-Nspire CX CAS seems to be the calculators equivalent of Windows 8...

Or you could say the CX CAS is the calculators equivalent of "the teachers pet", it does everything a teacher wants - only to compensate it is far from the brightest "kid" in class....



_____Casio Classpad_____ (I have 330 plus)
* The user experience is positive. My face gets a smile like the one on the plastic cover. If you've got a GUI you should have a good pointing device, and you have that with the pen. Drag to copy. Point to edit etc, everything a smooth flow. Doing a box zoom is one click and then make the box (point drag pen up). I will admit that the GUI can have a "sharp learning curve", but when you get it it is good. Example: I still haven't figured out how to shrink a matrix on the CX CAS. Here you simply mark and backspace unwanted rows/columns.
* Can do multi line editing if you do copy paste into editor window. Start editor, then a main window. Then you can jump and resize between the two rather smooth.
* I haven't seen a (major) bug yet.
* Can do laplace.
* Regarding price fx CP400 is only marginally more expensive than CX CAS and Prime, all can be had for around 130-150 EUR in the EU. The 330 is even cheaper.



So right now I would recommend the Classpad, but who knows, next week I might say get the TI! :-) (But MAN they have to fix the colour of selected text!!)

I found a short unboxing video for those that haven't seen the "colour classpad":

OP: Also give the advanced Casio a look. Can do Laplace which the TI can't. Prime can. Casio Pen interface is sweet, but menus can be .... 

I'm not completely sure what you want. Do you want to be able to edit them in a text format on multiple lines (meaning that "1/2" appears as 1/2), or do you want to edit them in multiple lines in a mathprint-like mode (meaning that "1/2" appears as )? If you want the former, many calculators will be able to do that, but I don't really know much model names. The 83+/34+ series do that, though, and iirc the 83/83+ calculators don't have an other input mode. Your TI-89 may be capable of this as well.
If you want multiple lines in a mathprint-like mode, then I don't know a single calculator that lets you do that, but someone else might know one.

Hi ben_g!

Thank you for your answer!

I just want to use more rows! Disregarding if it is in infix notation or mathematical display (TI-lingo: math print).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator_input_methods#Mathematical_display


The TI-89 won't let you edit anything in "mathprint". And, it won't let you edit in more than one row, unless you use the Text Editor.

So, I played around with the CX CAS emulator a little bit more. And I think I've figured it out!

doc->insert->Notes
menu->insert->math box

Now you've got an area that does word wrap math expressions! YES!!

And it even has Math Print.

So it ticks even that box!

Multi line, word wrapping editing in Math Print. Nice! This is what I wanted!

I still would like to know how to force the CX CAS to convert Math Print into Infix Notation, for example editing matrixes would sometimes be easier this way.

Any ideas how to do this?

Two more questions:

So the only manuals TI has released for the CX CAS is the TI-NspireCAS_ReferenceGuide_EN and TI-Nspire_CX-HH_GettingStarted_EN? I really miss something between a quick start and reference!

And, how about the HP Prime, any ideas there for multi line editing of math expressions?