Interesting professional calculator

[Vtile]

Well I have seen some discussions how calculators are doomed to be death race, well atleast Casio is thinking other route with this fx-fd10. I just found out it yesterday while trying to search the web for "engineering" calculator, it were somewhere on page 20 at google images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGDCNvelpAU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ujsHYqWNg

This relates my recent ramblings about lack of modern engineering pocket calculators around and that the calculator industry is stuckt to recycle the 80s technology (edit. what comes to pocket size, high end calculators).

[walter b]

Hyvää päivää Vtile,

Yes, that's an interesting calculator, even placed below the "battleship class" sizewise. Its connectivity is excellent IMHO. Display resolution is sufficient though it could be better. Keyboard looks quite limited. The calculator seems to be confined to the 21 preprogrammed applications mentioned. If true, it's a closed system - no user programming, no advanced calculations, no repurposing. So it may fill the niche it's designed for very well, but that's it. Not exactly what I'm looking for.

d:-/

Edit: I can't find a manual for this calculator on the CASIO site. What do I miss? Thanks in advance for helpful hints.

[walter b]

Sorry I've to withdraw my statement about the size. They tend to employ big-handed models in their advertisements

d:-I

[Vtile]

Hello, Walter

Indeed it is a purposedly build for one disibline of end-users in mind. It is obvious and is not general engineering & scientific calculator, but it does have interesting new features for a calculator. Also it is true that FD10 is huge, it seems to be a trend that partly I assume comes from the on the self 128x68 dot matrix display modules.

The connectivity is one thing that seems to be thought out really well (copied from hp48..50 ) and it is made easy to use accordign to marketing yada yada (so should be taken with grain of salt obviously). I like the CSV/spreadsheet support of it, I think it is something that should be at any high end calculator as a "data type" these days and as a basic feature. It is easily created in ie. Excel and is used to archieve platform exchange with ease I don't know how many decades already. Look-up tables and so forth comes to my mind, since awfully lot of things are are in standards with pages worth of std. values/series/limits/do&donots of different things. Also other way around calculator should have basic commands to make CSVs or atleast convert Arrows or lists to CSVs to thow them when needed to computer with ease.
Record "stack" to txt command would not be a poor idea in my mind also, to throw the calculation made with calculator to some paperwork if needed, ie. calculating things from blueprints etc or just have a way to verify your calculation.

Did you notice the backlight of keyboard and display? Nice touch-up for outdoor users. Some dim backlight one or two leds in well thought out spots (under user control) wouldn't be a bad thing in general for calculators.

The black and white LCD in general is good thing, I can not imagine where I would need a colors in calculator and what I have learnt from cellphones is that readability of the screens did go a few magnitude backwards when they did introduce the multicolor displays from them. (before huge touch screens come to compensate).

That FD10 also have somekind of free programmability as other high-end Casios, but I have no idea how the programmability goes with the Casios in general.

The keyboard is nice, what comes to see through keys, could be better ie. illuminated trough, with markings at top layers. Now I assume they drop too deep inside the calculator body. In general the number of buttons is at edge of fourcalc, but I assume there is all basic geometry tools for surveyors. Edit. The form of keys is just basic flat seen years and years, nothing exciting or new on that. Compared to HP35S keyshape just *meh*.

IP54 I assume is desired for the outdoors use where that thing is intended.

Pretty basic calculator inside, but the outside and some other things are nicely thought out. Plus it is a professional calculator outside teaching or financial industry.

Don't kick me but here is a link to casios page, http://www.casio-intl.com/asia-mea/en/ca...operation/

Edit. Oh, it took me 45 mins or so, off and on with coffee cup on the other hand to write this post. :O
Here is the manual (atleast the only one I did find) : http://support.casio.com/storage/en/manu...Pro_EN.pdf

[DavidM]

(11-15-2015 11:09 AM)walter b Wrote:  I can't find a manual for this calculator on the CASIO site. What do I miss? Thanks in advance for helpful hints.

I couldn't find a German one, but here's an English manual for the fx-FD10 Pro. It has an entire chapter devoted to programming, and it appears the programming can also be done on a PC and transferred to the calculator.

Nice find!

[Katie Wasserman]

This looks incredibly similar to the fx-9860G series which has been around for years. I have a fx-9860 slim which is really a fantastic calculator despite the so-so keys and it not having native RPN. However a couple of members here have written their own RPN applications for it. The screen and back light are just superb, BTW.

Here's one, and another one.

[walter b]

Thanks, David, for posting the link to the manual. English is ok.

d:-)

[walter b]

Kiitos, Vtile, for posting the link to the manual.

d:-)