joel@peora.UUCP (Joel Upchurch) (06/05/85)
I bought the new Casio FX451 calculator at Service Merchandise in Nashville TN a week ago and would highly recomend it for any programmer. It is an improved version of the old Casio FX450 calculator that has been out for a couple of years. Service Merchandise was selling it for $28.97. The FX451 is a combination of a programmer's and a scientific calculator. It looks like a pocket note book, When you open it up it has keys on both leaves. It is solar powered. The solar cell works much better than the one on the 450, which didn't work too well at low light levels. Amoung the features for the 451 are: - Binary, Octal and Hexadecimal calculations and conversions. - The usual scientific functions - English to metric conversion functions - Standard deviations - Rectangular <=> Polar conversions - Sexagesimal calculations (degree, minute, and seconds) - 13 physical constants in memory (c, h, G, etc) - And a lot of other stuff The 451 is small and light enough to carry in your shirt pocket. The only thing I don't like about the 451 is that when using the Hex mode is that the 0-9 keys are on the left leaf and A-F are on the right leaf. Since the scientific functions are disabled in Hex mode they should have used some keys over there for 0-9. If anybody from Casio is reading this, that's a hint. When you buy the calculator be careful that you don't 450 by mistake, they're very similar looking, but, as I said the solar cell doesn't work as well on the 450 and it doesn't have the English-Metric conversions. Radio Shack also sells what appears to be the same calculator as the EC-4013 for $34.95, so you can buy it there if you can't find a better price locally. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Casio, Service Merchandise, and Radio Shack are trademarks. The above is only my opinion and not that of my employer.