TI Launches Three New Graphing Calculators

confusedneutrino writes "Texas Instruments has announced 3 new graphing calculators to be available later this year. The TI-84 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition will be available this spring and are essentially the TI-83 Plus/SE, respectively, in a new case and with USB support. (The TI-84 Plus does sport a 15 MHz processor, compared to the TI-83 Plus' 6 MHz, though.) The TI-89 Titanium will be available in the summer and features 3x the available ROM of the 'old' TI-89 and will also have USB capability. Looks to me like a Voyage 200 minus QWERTY. I personally don't feel an inclination to upgrade at all..."

Comments

It reminds me...

[Pollux]

Back eight years ago when I was starting my Algebra II class in high school, I went shopping with my parents to get what "I needed" to get...a TI-82. Mom looked at the calculator, looked at the price ($78 at the time) and said, "Pff...these things will probably be worth $20 in five years."

Course, the TI-83 (same one that they sold back when I was in high school, just a slight change in design) is priced now for $89, the same as it was back eight years ago. Or I could get the TI-83 SILVER (which is what the TI sales reps are REALLY trying to push on schools now...I know because I'm a math teacher now), which retails for $114 (just because it has 128k ROM and a bunch of crappy "ecucational" software...though anyone who knows anything about basic programming can muster up the same thing with TI's programming interface).

The point is, you're still getting pretty much the same calculator with almost all of the same abilities. Sure, you can crunch recursive functions, large matricies, and integrals faster, (plus you get more software, which is really not necessary for 95% of customers), but there's really little to justify the need for a SILVER edition when 1) you pay $25 more for 128K ROM and software, and 2) electronic components have gotten a lot cheaper over the last eight years but the prices of TI calculators have not ever gone down.

Reminded me of a NCTM conference I went to last year...there was a calculator dealer trying to sell some old calculators. There was a TI-92 there, brand-spanking new, for $60. Asked them why it was so darned cheap, and the saleswoman said that "TI now has the TI-92 plusses and discontinued the 92s, so there's no support from TI, just a 30-day warranty from us." Difference between the 92 and the 92-PLUS: 128K of ROM for additional software. Well, the 92-PLUSs retail for $189, but I really got almost all the functionality of a $189 calculator for $60!

Anyways, all these "new" calculators that TI puts out, I really just wave my hand at them and say, "Baa." I already have one, and there's absolutely no need to "upgrade"!

ROM != RAM

[corsec67]

I HATE this: they say 5x more RAM, but actually, it has the SAME amount of ram. It has more Flash ROM, but that is not nearly as usefull as pure ram.

Like on the 83+ compared to the 83, the 83+ actually has LESS memory than the 83, not more.

Sheesh.

The old Back in my day...

[Remlik]

There are a ton of comments here that start with "Back in my day we didn't have (insert thing here) and we did GREAT!"

Here's the reality people, most course curriculim has changed since the introduction of the graphing calculators. I took the advanced Calc courses at the UofMN and it was REQUIRED that you owned one to enroll for the class...why? Because the professors had designed the course to use the calculators to teach the students things that were nearly impossible to teach without the visualization via graphing calcs. Sure they could get a comp and a projector and throw up a pick on a screen but they wanted more, they wanted you to change the values of the functions, understand how different terms affected the outcome.

Calc would have been insanly boring, if all we did was take intergrals, derivs, and solve diffi-Qs. I'm glad I invested in a TI-92 before my freshman year, its versatility beat the crap out of every other TI on the market.

I should also preface this post with how my class was graded...getting the "answer" was considered 25% of the worth of the question, what they wanted and taught was the process of deriving the answer, so having a calc that could do integrals was rather useless, you still had to show your work, especially on tests..it was nice for checking to make sure you added 2+2 right.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I teach AP Physics, and recently went to several workshops on how to teach the course and how to make sure your kids score well.

I make up the tests for my classes from the old AP tests. I have digital versions of all of the AP Physics tests, both B & C, going back to 1971 or so.

Newer tests are much more likely to give lots of numbers and ask for a numerical answer. Even then, the scoring is mostly based on how people arrive at the answer than it is on the answer itself. For a paticular sub-question, you might get five points for a correct answer. If you show your work, but plug the numbers into your calculator incorrectly, you might get 4 points.

There has been one huge change. The free-response portion of the AP Physics test now includes an equation sheet. This was added when the AP test designers realized that people were programming the equations into their calculators.

After they started letting calculators in, an interesting shift happened. I've noticed that a lot of the questions from the past few years don't require a calculator at all, but are purely algebraic.

This is ironic, because those goddamn calculators are destroying everyone's ability to do algebra. I get excellent math students at a solid high school, and they are incapable of manipulating or visualizing an equation without that little black box that half of them have surgically attached to their left palm. Pathetic.

Re:WTF?

[grgyle]

Oh yes! What a difference a few years makes!

I'm returning to school for a second BS (Electrical Engineering) after 15 years (I did Physics the first time through).

The curriculum, classes, and professor *assume* that you have full knowledge of the intracacies of a programmable calculator. Before, there would never be a chance of a heavy bookwork problem appearing on an exam (say, for example, requiring solving 3 simult equations) just because slogging through the handwriting would use up all of your exam time. Now, you can throw nasty matrices and integrals at your calculator...change units from miles-per-gallon to rods-per-hogshead at the touch of a button!

Differential equations? No prob, throw it at your calculator...

This is allowing tests and classes to get far more in depth in their material instead of getting hung up on simpler topics just because they take a long time to compute by hand... At my university, the only reason that laptops are discouraged in exams is a logistical one, because the real estate on the skimpy little classroom desks is too scant.

I'm also tutoring other calculus and physics students, graphing calculators were banned when I was in college, now they're required!

Re:Keep loving it, it's still the top of the line.

[yeremein]

I agree with you about TI's complacency. I'm sure TI makes a tidy profit on their calculators by now, seeing as how their calculator prices have never gone down, and nothing innovative has emerged since the TI 89/92+ in 1998 (which are the same calculator in a different form factor).

One would think they could afford to put in useful upgrades, such as an order of magnitude more RAM or a faster processor (IMHO, 10MHz is laughable these days, even for a graphing calculator).

Then again, perhaps TI sticks with the low-res black-only LCDs, slow processors, and miniscule amounts of RAM to limit power consumption. My TI-89 lasts weeks or months on a set of batteries--you won't get that from a PDA.