HP Prime too complicated

[Dave Britten]

(07-13-2018 12:05 PM)3298 Wrote:  

(07-13-2018 12:24 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  Just to stir the pot a little: the Casio Algebra FX has separate "home" and CAS modes.

Yes, it does, and it's not a very good calculator (I say that having owned one).
While we're on the topic of Casio calculators, I want to say that what I've seen about the Prime feels very Casio-like, dividing the functionality into disjointed applications accessed via an icon menu.

Yeah, the AFX isn't award winning or anything; it's got the typical Casio problem: a lot of functions separated into different modes with no interoperability between them. (I still can't figure out if there's a way to simultaneously graph functions and stat plots on a Casio.) Also, how have they managed to go 30+ years without giving their calculators a "print" command that doesn't pause and wait for you to press EXE?

The interesting thing about the AFX is that it runs on an 8086-compatible CPU, and is actually using something like Datalight ROM DOS for the OS. Technically speaking, it's an MS-DOS-compatible calculator, though none of that is ever exposed to the user.

The Prime falls prey to this kind of design to some degree. At least with the Prime, you can still access functions/data outside the current application, much like you would access files outside your current directory on Windows/Linux/etc.