I have a happy story about Casio and college. I started college with a very limited TI-55 calculator: 51 steps and no conditional branching. The rich kids got HP-41 calculators, the average ones got programmable Casios. I got a Casio PB-700, programmable in BASIC.

Best gift ever. I could finish all numeric methods tests in a fraction of the time it took for others to use or program the ordinary calculators. It was a huge qualitative leap.