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Hey, has someone tried the PRIZM yet?
I just got it anew today from ebay auction for a high indeed price (and I was crazy enough to bid), the man is a math teacher, he got it by winning some contest in a math conference.
Here is a little review from me:-
The PRIZM's screen is a bid better than what I expected. it's wide (measured 3.2", not 3.7" as advertised) and the display area fills full rectangle, not leaving big space from borders as usual in other CASIO gfx models, and the screen is bright and contrast-adjustable from 1 to 5; I think 3-4 is enough for everyone, 5 is a way too bright; this amazed me a little because its specs specifies 140 hours battery life (Alkaline; Ni-MH was also supported) of continual powered-on; I think it could be a few months in real use which it sits turned off for most of the time (I used fx-7700GB everyday when I was in university, with its 100hrs. batt.life, I remember I replaced batt. every few months); I thought that with this low power consumption, the screen should be much duller than this, but the PRIZM's screen is apparently a very power-saving device. The best thing of all is graphing, with a new color screen and new color shading, graphs look really good.
As for its features, rather disappointing, no CAS and beside the color screen with some additional fancy decoration I see not many things new, The PRIZM displays result in surds in Natural display mode and its font looks more beautiful in this mode than that of GII models which its font looks so dull. Unpacked from its blister pack, there are 3 application installed :- Geometry is nothing new, PicturePlot which should be built-in but not and 'conversion' which is only a supplementary for adding conversion function; showing icon in main menu but do nothing (how stupid); and pre-loaded materials, these take up about 7 Megs of storage memory and leave ~9 Megs of free space, totally there should be 16 Megs storage memory.
Connected to a PC, without installing any driver/application, the PRIZM shows itself as a mass storage drive which represents its storage memory in its root folder and internal memory as a folder (namely '@mainmem'). In fact, there is no single FA-124 alike program was given on its supplementary CD, communication with PC needs only My Computer window, on PC connection, the PRIZM screen shows tips of how to install an add-in, update main memory and import text file which of all are very easy: just copying the file to its corresponding folder. Another new good thing is password protected owner's name (in previous models, anyone can change the user name), I tried the reset button and the password is still intact.
Didn't try the programming yet (I'm not so good at CASIO fx programming, thinking it's just a kid's toy compares to computer languages I use on PC), guess there is nothing new.
Another low side is its body's material, normally CASIO made their gfx calculator with ABS. I don't know what the PRIZM's body made of, but rather sure it's not ABS, it's not as hard as, I tried with the battery cover, it can be twisted with a little force, which never happened before in previous models. Tapping its body on the back, it sounds like tapping on hollow cheap plastic. And the battery cover itself is loose when closed, can shift and make sound over your palm on moving, make thinking of fx-7400gplus-gy's battery cover, very similar in material, shape and sound when tapped. Front cover was made from the similar material but a translucent type, too opaque to be seen its translucency easily.
Summary: A real improvement you can expect form the PRIZM is beauty of color screen and fancy of displaying and doing things with picture (and of course, in exchange of a lot more money -- US$129 MSRP). If you are looking for other thing than these, go another way. |
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