I have owned top of the line graphing and scientific calculators from TI, HP, Casio, Sharp, etc. This machine, the Casio FX-9860g Slim version, continues the Casio quality tradition and is definitely put together very well. It is also a very good improvement over its predecessor, the Casio FX-9860g, with a very fine pocketable clamshell portable design with a much improved keyboard layout except for the location of the Navigation keypad itself, etc. At $69.99 right now from one of the quality suppliers in NJ on the Amazon website, it is indeed a very great deal!
The pros and cons as I see it are:
PROS:
1) It has all the standard features that we have come to expect on such a machine, plus the inclusion of an electronic OS upgrade capability from the Casio educational website. This is done using a USB interface with a PC computer and is also quite fast and easy to set up. The current OS production version is 1.10, but it can be upgraded to the OS version 2.0 (which is almost entirely compatible with the current system hardware) at Casio's educational website.
2) The machine itself is quite fast with a nice graphical interface and resultant plotting system. The resultant plots are high quality and with the many added features available for enhancement are very intuitive for the learning process.
3) It has a nice and quite modern, folding clamshell body design that sits very nicely both on a desk or a table as well as in your hand. It even has two feet for great stability that are constructed on the bottom at the back of the very well made unit.
4) It has a very large amount of onboard main memory, plus additional Flash memory for tackling quite memory intensive problems.
5) Although it is called a calculator, it is really a small and very fast handheld computer system which can tackle problems from the most simple to almost the most complex.
6) It has a very useful user interface system with multiple icons. The calculator functions are all controlled using an Algebraic Operating System (AOS).
7) It has a very high quality backlight system that makes the display screen much easier to read at very low, prevailing light levels.
8) It also has a very fine stored Help system with both syntax and an onboard Manual of Explanations for every command in the FX-9860 System Catalog. Both the Help function and the System Catalog function are available at the touch of a key (or a shifted key for the System Catalog).
CONS:
1) Some functions that you would readily expect to be available with a single key press on the main keyboard (such as the common hyperbolic functions for example) require instead multiple key presses (hyperbolics are embedded in the OPTN menu softkeys which is much more inconvenient), but usually with only a single shift key press first.
2) This machine is limited to graphing functions in two-dimensions (2-D) and NOT in 3-D as can be performed on the Casio Classpad330 (or the HP50g or the TI-89 Titanium or on the TI-89 or on the TI Voyage 200).
3) There is no CAS (Computer Algebra System) at all which these days is a very BIG limitation. Casio CAS systems are now only available on the Classpad 330 pen-based system or on the older FX-2.0Plus which is much harder to find at all or even at a good price these days, since it was first introduced about 2000.
4) The FX-9860g Slim does not require a backup coin cell battery, but is powered only by two AAA batteries for over 150 hrs with no backlight and for 50 hrs with the backlight on continuously. This is a significant battery life improvement over the comparable HP and TI models.
5) The navigation keypad is located on the bottom left of the front face of the keyboard. This is just fine for left-handers, but for primarily right handed individuals, it should be located on the right hand bottom side in my opinion for much easier and far more natural key stroke motions.
Get more detail about Casio fx-9860G Slim Graphing Calculator.
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