First Impressions

[Boo]

... the contrast in lettering on the white keys is terrible. I'm late 40s, eyesight reasonable and use computers every day without issues. The lettering is small, some of the symbols are VERY difficult to see for me. Worst of all, in low-light programming while in bed it is simply impossible for me to see the light orange letters on the white keys. In particular I cannot even see there ARE orange symbols on the number keys, and on the other keys I cannot make out what the symbols are. Obviously I need to use the calculator in better light but I do think the colour choice is abysmal. Even the ble lettering is difficult to read, particularly on the number keys, because the contrast is terrible. Blue lettering on the black keys is a bit better but all key legends for orange/blue are too small, and way too low-contrast. Might be fine for teenage eyes, but as I said my eyes aren't terrible, but there are situations where I simply cannot read them.

I have been entering a program, and one thing I'd *really* love to see added to the UI is this: When entering a program there's a "Cmds" softkey. This is great, because you can simply select the command from a menu, and it's inserted for you. Saves a LOT of typing and hunt-peck. What I'd like to see is a similar "Vars" menu, which uses already definied/used variable names from your program so you can select them from the menu instead of typing them all out again. For example, if I enter a line containing a variable (i.e, "LOCAL xincr;") then that variable is available in a menu from then on. Menu is populated on the fly when entering proggy or when it's loaded.

Possible BUG?... somehow I've managed to have a user-defined program which is overlaoding an inbulit program name. I understand this, no problem. I see this in my program catalog as "Function(App)". It's an empty template. I'm trying to delete it. I delete all the content. I select the "More" menu looking for a "Delete" option but it's not there. So I'm stuck with a "blank" overlaoded program in my Program Catalog. Looks like a bug to me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding.

As to my problems connecting calculator to laptop (running Ubuntu 12.04 hosting VirtualBox running Windows 7), I have solved this. My first problem was that the USB connection to calculator does not work in a USB3.0 port -- I got the error...

XPS kernel: [ 4045.932003] usb 3-1: new high-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd
Jan 7 00:15:26 XPS kernel: [ 4046.193637] usb 3-1: device descriptor read/8, error -71
Jan 7 00:15:26 XPS kernel: [ 4046.314110] usb 3-1: device descriptor read/8, error -71

Connecting to a USB2 port fixed this, and the device mounted (in Ubuntu) correctly. The next problme was that to make USB avaialble to VirtualBox under Ubuntu, one must add your user to the VirtualBox group (you'll have to google the correct group name and method, as I don't recall offhand).

So, now I have connectivity to PC, and happy enough.

One other thing I really like -- the keys are lovely and tactile. Perhaps the directional cursor circle thing is a tad too loud but otherwise keyboard very nice. Perhaps 4/5 or more.