Help Me Replace My Calculator

October 7, 2007 9:33 AM

Calculator-filter: My beloved casio fx-115s is dying after about 20 years of use. I need to replace it. Tell me what to get as a replacement.

I am not interested in a graphing calculator; these are too bulky for me to carry around while teaching, and are frankly more powerful than I need. I just need a basic scientific calculator, say 25 bucks or less. What "cheap" calculator do you like best, and what features about it make you like it?

posted by wittgenstein to technology (7 comments total)

eV41. It's a freeware HP-41CX emulator that works on windows CE.
posted by jet_silver at 10:06 AM on October 7, 2007

I like the TI-30 series (whatever the latest iteration of it is) - I bought one a few years back just to have a cheap calculator I could pull out when I needed to figure something out quickly, and it does the job well. It feels snappier than most calculators I've used for some reason, too.
posted by wanderingmind at 10:11 AM on October 7, 2007

I really, really like the current cheap Casio scientific calculators. I have a Casio FX-115, which has a two-line display and the nicest visual algebraic support I've come across. It cost about $14.

There's another model with an even better 3-line display. That'll cost you all of 20 bucks or so.
posted by killdevil at 10:55 AM on October 7, 2007

I see that you had an fx-115s. Mine is actually the "FX-115MSPlus," with Visually Perfect Algebraic Method support (VPAM). It's currently sold in Staples, Target, Wal-Mart, etc.
posted by killdevil at 10:58 AM on October 7, 2007

The Ti-30X II allows input like a graphing calculator, such as the caret^button (+parentheses), and costs less than $20. It also has a solar option on most models.

For a free graphing calculator, download the amazing graphcalc for your desktop. It lacks a few statistical features, but uses a mouse to navigate and offers a savable or printable screen sized list of all calculations for the session. Graphcalc's wikipedia page.
posted by Brian B. at 2:44 PM on October 7, 2007

I would highly recommend that you stick with the S-VPAM line of the Casio calculators. I find the "natural display" of the newer models a little confusing. I currently use the non-solar powered version of the FX-300MS and it is a great little calculator.

Say NO to "natural display", especially if you're used to an older model. I have a number of friends who bought the new style of the calculators only to revert back to the older models within a week or two.
posted by cholly at 1:39 AM on October 8, 2007

For anyone who reads this once it's archived, I bought the
fx-115 ES for $17.99 at Target. It does have the natural display that cholly disliked so much, but it had some great features that I have not seen before on a nongraphing calculator:
a) it does numerical integration
b) it will do arithmetic with a few matrices (no larger than 3 x 3)
c) it seems to have the Standard Normal Distribution stored in it.

These sold me. I am now training myself to use it as quickly as I could use the old one.
posted by wittgenstein at 11:50 AM on October 16, 2007