Texas Instruments Announces New Calculator

S. Kinney writes "TI recently announced the development of a new calculator, known as the Voyage 200, to replace the TI-92+. The software changes are rather minor, as the device is designed to be compatible with the 92, though the addition of a clock makes the Voyage more functional for some, and the case of the device enjoys a new design. Perhaps the most useful upgrade to the 92+ is the addition of more memory, for a sum of 2.7 MB of storage. No word on release date, but it'll be interesting to see how this comes out. It may be one more step towards releasing a modern-day Avigo, their failed PDA from a few years back. "

Comments

Small and powerful

[Shaheen]

I had a TI-92 once. It was stolen a week or two afterward (this was in high school). I switched to an HP-48G the next week. There's something to be said for small and powerful rather than big and conspicuous. Too bad HP is out of the game now.

Open Hardware calculator?

[RevRigel]

With the demise of HP's calc division, and the continual and unparalleled suckage of TI's calculators, has anyone else thought about doing an open hardware/open source calculator design?
It'd be possible to make kits for them, even to the point of doing injection molded plastic, if you were making a few hundred or a few thousand. Circuit boards would be dirt cheap in those quantities. Just use some low power processor with decent floating point and integer performance, and make it readily expandable/hackable.

Anyone?

Slide Rule

[wiredog]

Seriously, that's what we were taught in freshman year of high school. I didn't use a calculator in HS, or College either. I, personally, don't think calculators should be used in high school math classes.

Re:Defending RPN and HP calculators

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It is nice that you found some use with your calculator.

As I understand it, the HP drawbacks are:

*cost
*butt slow chip

I had very robust TI and Casio calculators - one Casio survived being thrown into a ditch full of snow and being chewed some by a dog. They've all probably survived falls onto concrete.

I only use the graphing calculators for large operations as I can see the entire data set and order of operations on one screen, even after it has been solved, if I find an error I can recall the entire calculation, correct a number and reexecute the entire computation, as well as having more than one data point and operation per line - large display HPs still only have one, anything with more than what, 6 data points end up scrolling off the screen.

And now that I'm not in any type of school, I don't have the time to retrain myself into doing everything in RPN. I can do it but the learning curve, the cost and the cost of errors is too high to merit getting proficient in HPs.

Good for TI-92 users, bad for HS students.

[Julius X]

When I was back in High School, I would never have bought a TI-92 (the plus hadn't come out yet) because due to its QWERTY keyboard layout it was banned on all tests--most notably the SAT.

A couple years later when I went to college, the TI-89 came out with all the functionality of a TI-92 PLUS in a TI-86 packaging---perfect I told myself. That would have made the ultimate calculator for High School or College.

Now they go back to the TI-92 type layout. This is probably good for professionals, and it is no doubt a good machine, but I would never use it when its already larger than my Sony 505 laptop. (Granted, no good Graphic Calculator software exists for PCs besides the XP powertoy which won't run on this laptop).

I wish they had kept the TI-xx naming string too, because those models already have an established market--and with this new name, that might be lost.

Anyone bet how long it'll be until we see the TI-90 with components from this new one but in a TI-90 formfactor?

Re:resolution

[dillon_rinker]

Ok, wise guy. =) Provide me with numerical coordinates for the intersection(s) of the following two equations. You can't use any mechanical aid to calculation (no slide rules OR electronic calculators). You can reference tables in books, provided you also prove that particular entry you use is correct.

y = -0.437(x^3) - 1.42(x^2) + 4.84(x) - 12
y = 13.9 sin(8.16x) + 2.4

Note that a calculator geek will provide an answer with the appropriate number of significant digits in about five minutes. I imagine you will find this impossible given the restraints above. If not, then I want to shake your hand.

Traditional (ie non-calculator) textbooks and teaching techniques generally pick "nice" numbers for problems. They do this because it is unrealistic to expect the student to produce correct answers in a reasonable period of time, and to do that for all the odd problems on the page, and to do that in one evening, along with all your other homework. However, this is completely unrealistic; NO problems encountered outside the classroom have "nice" numbers unless they are specially constructed.

However, with calculators, you can solve "real-world" problems, using realistic (multi-digit, non-integral) numbers. This is useful both for practical reasons (students aren't shocked when they encounter REAL problems) and for motivational ones (no more students asking "When will we have to factor x^2-9 in the real world?")

Re:Tetris� on a calculator and how to make it

[dimator]

Damn you for linking to everything2! I'll be clicking around there for 4 hours now.