Color-Screen TI-84 Plus Calculator Leaked

KermMartian writes "It has been nearly two decades since Texas Instruments released the TI-82 graphing calculator, and as the TI-83, TI-83+, and TI-84+ were created in the intervening years, these 6MHz machines have only become more absurdly retro, complete with 96x64-pixel monochome LCDs and a $120 price tag. However, a student member of a popular graphing calculator hacking site has leaked pictures and details about a new color-screen TI-84+ calculator, verified to be coming soon from Texas Instruments. With the lukewarm reception to TI's Nspire line, it seems to be an attempt to compete with Casio's popular color-screen Prizm calculator. Imagine the graphs (and games!) on this new 320x240 canvas."

Comments

And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Z00L00K]

Have HP done something lately?

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Indeed. I'm clinging on my HP-48s, and I dread the day they'll stop working, because absurdly old tech or not, there's just nothing better on the market right now.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Trepidity]

HP still offers RPN on a few of their calculators. In the graphing-calculator department, there's the HP 50g, which can switch between RPN and non-RPN modes.

They have a list of the six RPN calculators they still sell here (bottom of the page).

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[zubiaur]

Last time I checked the 50g was their top of the line calculator. Well built, powerful enough and with a good, clear, easy to read BW lcd. Software wise... it has not changed much. The 50g uses its "powerful" 200mhz processor to emulate the old 4-8mhz saturn one, the software in gneneral is just a minor evolution from the one found in an older 49g, it runs faster but thats about it. The one gripe I have with the 50g is its battery life, probably related to the fact that it its running everything emulated.

Do I hope HP will do something about its aging calculator lineup? No.
Am I happy with the current calculators? Yes.
Will I be tempted to buy a Casio or a TI? Hell no, once you go RPN you never go back.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a Maemo device, there's a pretty good HP calculator simulator for it. Runs the same programs, behaves just the same except of course that you don't get the keypress feel from the real physics keyboard.

FTW RPN.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[vlm]

on android I use hc-16c and free42. Wolfram alpha if you allow "cloudy" solutions.

There are a couple hp48 emu but the buttons are too small on anything other than a tablet.

If anyone can find better math software for an android device, post here?

Odd how you can get decent software on cruddy hardware, or cruddy software on decent hardware. I'd like something as powerful as a HP48 but not emulated... native. I know octave is available on android but the keyboard situation is icky.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used the HP 50g for the last 4-5 years, and it works just fine. I believe they still sell it, and it's more than competitive with even the latest TI calculators, as far as I'm aware.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I think every OS and software platform in existence has a HP48 emulator. Currently I use one on my Android cellphone when I need to calculate something and I don't have the - increasingly rare - real thing with me, but as you say, without the excellent HP keyboard, it's nowhere near as fast to do anything with it.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Threni]

I can't believe there's no Android app you can run on a Nexus7 or low/mid range phone. I'm not even going to look. If there isn't one, it sounds like an opportunity for someone.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[TheGratefulNet]

hp15c was brought back and then totally sold out.

you can find the new ones, still, on ebay (still new).

new cpu, new buttons and plastic but the same basic idea and even though it was $100, I did buy one. and one for a backup.

I hate touch screens and I loved my old style hp calc. when the 15c came back, I grabbed some to use and keep.

have not found a need for graphing. once I need more than the 15c, for example, I'll lift my lazy ass up and go find a computer to use (ob disc: I'm not in school and never asked to 'solve maths', live, on the spot, anymore, thank deity.)

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[guttentag]

"We're working with Nokia on a 35s with a graphing function that has an inverted-color screen. We're calling it the Lumia X-Ray." -Meg Whitman

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[LaughingRadish]

Really what HP needs to do is bring back the 42s and 32sii and ditch the 35s (or at least redo it from the beginning and not screw up this time, thus making the 35sii). For the successor of the 50g, I want to see the ENTER key put back where it belongs and ditch the emulation. Sheesh, there are people out there doing the engineering for this stuff for free.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Cinder6]

Apple users have access to PCalc on both OS X and iOS, which is the best "traditional-style" calculator app I've found, and it has RPN support. It's a freemium calculator; basic functionality is there, as well as standard "scientific calculator" features (and basic RPN, but no visual stack), but you have to pay a dollar here and there to unlock everything.

Now for an aside. I first learned of RPN in an algorithms class I took a while back, and never saw the purpose for it beyond novelty use. However, a couple weeks ago, I decided to give it a fair shot. I find that I actually like it quite a bit, but the odd thing is I can't articulate why. So I ask: Why do you, Slashdot users, like RPN?

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[JonySuede]

for me RPN, LISP and FORTH are the same in that regard: instead of coding, you built the parse tree explicitly the way you wanted it to be, not the way the interpreter/compiler decide to interpret your code. You do not think about operator precedence and evaluation order, you explicitly formulate it the way you want it to be evaluated and event tough it seems like that explicitation should increase the cognitive load its most good programmers that I know found that it decrease it... Now, rightfully, you could ask why... and to that question I have no answer.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[bored_engineer]

As I'm sure that others will point out, there are several for Android. I use Droid48, when I don't have my calculator handy. It's a poor substitute, though.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[J.J. Dane]

Well, my HP 28C still works perfecly after about a quarter century of daily use, so I wouldn't be too worried..

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[caseih]

I use an HP 48 emulator on my smart phone every day. Sure I miss the button feel, but with vibrate tactile feedback works okay. Maybe HP should just make an android device with nice calculator buttons. Then just make good math apps, along the lines of math cad.

If course admitting that a graphing calculator is just a general purpose computer these days would probably get them banned by schools and test proctors.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have?? I'm sorry to correct grammar, but that just sounds horribly wrong. "Has HP done something lately?" HP, being a single entity should be referred to as such.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[sco08y]

for me RPN, LISP and FORTH are the same in that regard: instead of coding, you built the parse tree explicitly the way you wanted it to be, not the way the interpreter/compiler decide to interpret your code. You do not think about operator precedence and evaluation order, you explicitly formulate it the way you want it to be evaluated and event tough it seems like that explicitation should increase the cognitive load its most good programmers that I know found that it decrease it... Now, rightfully, you could ask why... and to that question I have no answer.

It might be a bit more cognitive load, but there's no, "fuck, do I need parens here or not" to throw you off as with traditional notation.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[gatzke]

They did a re-release of the totally awesome HP 15C.

I have two on my desk, the original version.

This is the perfect RPN calculation tool.

http://www.amazon.com/HP-NW250AA-15C-Scientific-Calculator/dp/B005EIG3MW

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[rossdee]

I have a HP 17b11+ financial calculator. It can be configured to do RPN and works as a scientific calculator as well.
It's alsp got a clock

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Radak]

Unless you are writing British English instead of American English, in which companies or organisations are considered plural entities in and of themselves, therefore the OP's grammar is just fine.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[blind biker]

I can't find info on the screen resolution, but it seems HP has done nothing to improve it. Since you have it, how does the screen look like?

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[zubiaur]

Its a bit taller (131×80 vs 131×64), contrast is improved and glare reduced. The screen is noticeably better than the one in the 49g.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[arth1]

I bought the new 15C-LE too, but it's seriously buggy to the point of being unusable for any old programs that depend on the PSE function.
It could be fixed with a flash upgrade, but this is New HP, not the old one where the top guys had pride in what they did and didn't look for pennies to save, so it won't happen.

It doesn't support synthetic programming like the original either. And eats batteries if you hold down keys.
Yes, it's faster, but I'd trade it for a real 15C in a heartbeat.

My favourite calculator? My trusty old HP-41CV. As long as stores sell N cells, I expect it to keep on running.

And a Faber-Castell pocket slide rule, which has the advantage of being usable in conditions I can't use an electric calculator in. Like torrential rain or forty below zero. It doesn't run out of batteries either. And it's so thin that I can keep it in my pocket without causing a bulge, and just forget about it until I need it.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I got in on that goodness. The new 15c is a lovely machine (wish they'd not been a limited release, I'd buy a couple more). Of course, I also have a 50g, which I used a lot in grad school, but I find myself doing less matrix and symbolic math these days (and absolutely no symbolic matrix math, though I still love knowing my 50 can do it), so I mostly use the 15c and am a bit rusty when I do go for the 50.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Solandri]

The HP-48 emulator for Android is Droid48. It just got updated with some new skins which I guess are supposed to look better on high-res devices, but look pretty bad on mine. The older skins looked just like my old HP-48S (RIP), so I hope the developer at least gives us the option to use the old skins.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

My 1993 vintage Hp 48G is sitting next on my desk, still used on a regular basis. I now longer run apps or games on it, but that's ok. It's a damn fine calculator. I cracked it open in 1998 to solder in 128K of RAM, and it's still working great. I've tried the 49 and 50 variants, and none of them fully replicate the keyboard action or the key layout.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[the phantom]

I want to see the ENTER key put back where it belongs and ditch the emulation.

This! A thousand times, this!

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Agripa]

I replaced my HP-48 with an HP-50g and have no complaints. It uses four AAA cells instead of three, has USB, a full sized SD card slot, and a user replaceable coin lithium cell for battery backup.

The tactile keyboard is a pretty close match as well.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[swillden]

So I ask: Why do you, Slashdot users, like RPN?

I don't know that I can really articulate it, either, but I can report the results of an interesting experiment I participated in about 20 years ago.

I was an RPN-lover even then, having recently graduated from my 15C to a 28S, but most of the other geeks in the university computer lab where I spent a ridiculous amount of time couldn't see the sense in it. Late one night the discussion got somewhat heated and someone said that an advantage of RPN was that it was faster because it required fewer keystrokes. A measurable claim like that immediately sparked a demand for proof, so we decided to do some comparisons.

One guy got on the whiteboard and wrote down four very complex arithmetic expressions. Then for each expression, two candidates were selected, one from the RPN camp and one from the infix camp. Each was to write down on the board, under the expression, the series of keystrokes that would be needed to evaluate it. In all cases the RPN keystroke list was shorter, often considerably, but after the first was done everyone noticed a second interesting and unexpected outcome: The RPN-wielder finished writing down his keystroke list long before the infix-wielder -- and not just because of the number of keystrokes. Everyone watching noticed that the infix-proponent often paused for a second or two to think about how to handle the next bit, or stopped for a moment to go back to count up parentheses. In contrast, the RPN-er never paused, never hesitated, just wrote down keystrokes as fast as he could.

After that, we all decided that we should also time the remaining trials, which were all conducted with different candidates. The RPN user consistently finished 25% faster than the infix user, even though the keystroke list was only about 5% shorter.

Then someone (I think it was actually someone from the RPN camp) decided to write a truly horrendously complex expression. It had fractions nested at least ten layers deep and was, frankly, ridiculous. Two more stepped up to try and, once again, the RPN user wrote down keystrokes in a long list, without any more hesitation than it took to find his place in the expression. The infix guy, on the other hand got badly bogged down, backed up several times and ultimately gave up after his RPN competitor had been watching him struggle for five minutes.

To top it all off, actually punching all those keystrokes into real calculators showed that RPN was more accurate. On only one of the five problems was the RPN calculation not correct, while the infix calculation was incorrect on three out of five (determining which answers were correct took significant time and much arguing).

Bottom line, per our impromptu tests and my personal experience, RPN is faster and easier.

I could easily explain why it requires fewer keystrokes, but why exactly it requires less cognitive effort is harder to describe. I believe, though, that it's because when you use RPN you pick a "path" through the expression, and then just follow it. At each point along the path you only have to remember where you've been and where you're going. The calculator keeps track of the stack. With infix you have to manage the "stack" in your head, figuring out when to add and remove nesting levels with parentheses. That's not exactly right, but it's as close as I've been able to come.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Z00L00K]

And the 15C (which I have one of) would be great to get back. Small enough to keep around and sufficient for some scientific work. At least they have the physical tools still because the 12C is still on the market. so it wouldn't be hard to revive that.

Current collection:
HP15C
HP41CV
HP28S

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Enter key, yes.

Ditch the emulation? I'm not sure, you mean porting the system to native ARM, or coming up with a bloody fast Saturn chip?

The latter is so ridiculously silly there's little point discussing it; i presume that's not what you meant. (There's no justification for the cost of designing the chip if it only lives in one calculator, and between ARM clocks as they are and the details in the next paragraph, the emulation penalty is not really performance, only power consumption. One word: Li-ion.)

The former is less silly, but practically pointless. You still need Saturn emulation and all the used (documented and not) ROM entry points to run legacy programs, and there are provisions for (and some computationally expensive functions already are) ARM-native functions; progressive replacement of more and more functions with ARM native code will clean up any last bits of performance troubles, and helps somewhat with the power troubles.

But again, the power troubles are the result of the easy-but-inferior decision to use AAs exclusively, rather than a Li-ion pack of slightly smaller overall dimensions (retaining contacts for the AAs for emergencies or remote field work). Truth be told, I've thought about modding my 50 with such a pack and a Palm Pre inductive charger, but I got out of grad school and started using the 15C almost exclusively before I got round to it.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[arth1]

I could easily explain why it requires fewer keystrokes, but why exactly it requires less cognitive effort is harder to describe.

Not really. It's how you would do it without a calculator. If someone told you to do 23 x 27, you would likely write down (or memorize) the two numbers and then do the multiplication. And if someone told you to calculate (4+7)*(11+31), you would first take 4 and 7, add them, then take 11 and 31 and add them, and finally multiply the results.
Just like in RPN. You get the same intermediate results too.

In other words, if you know basic arithmetic well enough to do it on pen and paper, you should feel at home using RPN. If you don't, it won't do you any good, and will even prevent you from faking it.

Also, most non-RPN calculator are still reverse in how they handle single-operand calculations. To get sin(90), you typically enter 90 SIN. The advantage is that when you need to use the result of one calculation, you don't have to store it. If you've already added 42 and 18 to get 60, and need to take cosine of that, it does not make sense to hit "STO 1 COS( RCL 1) =" instead of just "COS".
So when calculator users are already used to it for single operands, why not use it for two, like RPN does?

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Jane Q. Public]

Despite HP's statement long ago that they were getting out of the calculator business, they did release a color graphing calculator 4 or 5 years back, give or take. I don't remember the model number. I saw the actual product in Office Depot.

Sales were a flop. People considered the color feature to be an unnecessary toy and unjustified expense.

But if you are running OS X, you can get a virtual HP 48 or 54g, complete with actual, official (courtesy of HP) firmware, running in an emulator, for only $9. (Not a typo... that's less than 10.) At the OS X app store. Looks and works exactly like a 54g. (Or 48, if you like that one better.) It's called "Emu48" but it does both 48 and the 54g.

I don't think it's on iOS, which would be cool, but I think it would probably strain the device's resources.

Since I have need of a good programmable, higher-math-capable calculator at times, but don't need (or want) to carry one in my pocket, this was ideal for me. It's an incredible value.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Jane Q. Public]

By the way, I also have the HP 15c and 16c in software, both also excellent for the tasks for which they are designed. These are open source emulations, not from the Apple app store, but again they use the actual HP ROMs.

You might have to do a bit of hunting to find those.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Jane Q. Public]

Dude. If you don't need to have it in your pocket, you can get the 15c in software (using an emulator, but it's official HP ROM) for free. Looks and feels exactly the same, you just need to use your keyboard or mouse for input.

You can also get the 16c (I have them both). And for $9, you can get the HP 54g from the Apple app store, again with official HP ROM.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[gatzke]

I have a 15C emulator on my droid, but it just does not feel the same.

HP had buttons that feel like buttons should, not the cheap low-tolerance stuff on most TIs.

And the landscape form factor fits in your hands, letting you use both together.

It is built to be a tool.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Life2Death]

This is depressing. I had a Palm (color) that could run circles around this, had brilliant color (compared to none) and could do the same things much much easier and then some, for a mear $110 +$7~ for the software. Keep going america!

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[gatzke]

Yep. Any calculator type calculating and I need my 15C. For anything more complex, I am going to a PC, probably with excel or matlab.

You can get decent used deals occasionally, if you need a spare. I convinced my retired dad to part with his 15C so I have a backup. Nobody realizes I have $400 worth of calculator on my desk...

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a few months, Mathematica on a Surface Pro will be more powerful and still be portable.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[EricTheRed]

Have they sorted out the dodgy keyboard problems?

My 10 year old HP48G was really bad (to the point of almost being unusable) when it came to the 0 & 1 keys

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are writing British English instead of American English, in which companies or organisations are considered plural entities in and of themselves, therefore the OP's grammar is just fine.

Except it's not, really. Strictly speaking, in British English, collective nouns are only plural when you're talking about the component parts as a group, not as the individual entity. (As opposed to American English, where they are never plural.)

"Have HP done something lately?" In British English would imply, "Have the employees of Hewlett-Packard done anything lately?" Which is an odd question. What did you expect, a general strike of the calculator division?

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Hognoxious]

Strictly speaking, in British English, collective nouns are only plural when you're talking about the component parts as a group, not as the individual entity.

I'm not even sure what you mean by that.

We'd certainly say "Manchester United are shit", "Wales have just been thrashed by Argentina" and "Labour are even bigger twerps in opposition than they were in government".

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[kelemvor4]

Indeed. I'm clinging on my HP-48s, and I dread the day they'll stop working, because absurdly old tech or not, there's just nothing better on the market right now.

There are some totally decent smartphone calculator apps out there. Unless you need to take an SAT or something and must have a "certified" calculator, that is. My 48G is collecting dust mostly right now. The physical buttons on the real HP are nice, but not nice enough to justify carrying another large device that otherwise offers no benefit vs a smartphone.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[godefroi]

Most people who learned C never got the operator precedence rules down well, so they just put parentheses everywhere, just in case...

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Applekid]

So, what exactly is the benefit of RPN? Aside from the fact that one might be habituated to it?

I can klutz through a reasonably complex expression, but I would much rather enter it in like I would write it out on paper. Dropping a few parentheses isn't really that much of a bother. I don't really ever see it written out that way, so it's not like people used to the format have forgotten regular infix expressions.

I'm not trying to be confrontational, because if there really are benefits I wouldn't mind switching to a new calculator because "yay new toy. "

And why isn't there a calculator can can operate in Prefix, Postfix, and Infix? One would think the actual data entry to the calculator should be notation agnostic by now.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave up and almost replaced my 49g with the inferior(but faster) nspire cas but was turned off by the locking down(standardized exams/schools do not apply to me any longer, just want a small relatively capable portable tool for q&d), so broke down and ordered a 50g(kb's MUCH nicer than the 49g but the builde quality overall is crap nothing like the 48s and earlier...).

Probably eventually give up and look into/learn macsyma et. al. android ports for phone/tablet usage, but I'm a ways off from that point ATM.

To this day I still regret loaning someone my 48sx and never getting it back... I keep hoping that HP would get serious about calcs again, maybe with a MUCH updated xpander + CAS running android, well anything but an M$ OS... "natively" rather than the saturn emulation of the 49g+/50g on ARM9.

(Pricing on calcs is pretty insanely high too, from when I was evaluating options to replace the 49g, but it still kills me that the 50g is regularly close to half the price of it's closest potential competitors... and only one of those has a color LCD(don't care really)...)

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[arth1]

My main issue with touch screens as a substitute is the high rate of accidental key presses you get.

People say that they type really well on their smartphones, but if checking, it tends to be really well for being done on a smartphone, not really well overall. A 5% mistype rate may be liveable when typing an instant message or e-mail, because you both have autocorrect and also can go back and correct manually. However, when using a calculator, most operations take place immediately, and only numeric entries can be corrected.

You need a completely new kind of calculator app that can step back anything you did. A normal emulator of existing calcs won't do that. If you hit fifty keys before inadvertently brushing your thumb too close to one unidentified key that did something, you're S.O.L. Worse, you may not even notice.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even HAVE a HP? They all -- 48, 49, and 50 -- run on AAAs, not AAs.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Jane Q. Public]

Yes, I erred when I wrote "looks and feels exactly the same". Of course it doesn't. I meant that it looks the same and works the same. Obviously it doesn't feel the same.

I loved their little machines. I had an 11c in college. Among other things, I programmed it to do -- appropriately enough -- Monte Carlo simulations in order to prove a certain popular gambling theory wrong. Haha. The old processors were slow enough that I ended up having to build a stand it plugged into so I could use bigger batteries and let it run for days at a time.

Then I got a 15c, then a 28, then the slightly more-capable 28s. Didn't get another one after that until I got a 54g about 2 years ago. So I had that 28s for... well, a long time.

I was less impressed with the keys on the 54g. They just didn't have the old HP feel, and I felt the layout could have been better.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

When my 48gx broke, I bought a TI but realized that I couldn't use a non RPN calculator anymore. I just couldn't get my head around it. I looked online and they were going for so much I eventually had to break it open and fix it myself. Luckily it was an easy fix though! Are there any other good RPN calculators out there?

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[JonySuede]

thank you both , now I know why !

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[Cinder6]

This and the response you're replying to are great explanations/answers. Thanks.

(Also, not sure why I was modded troll on my original post, but whatever.)

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[LaughingRadish]

The 15C WAS brought back, though with some rather unfortunate problems. 1) There are at least ten well-documented bugs in the firmware. Google for "HP 15C limited edition bugs". 2) No word of firmware updates has come out of HP. 3) The calculator was priced significantly higher than the 12C and is even higher now. As far as I can tell, production of it has stopped. I got mine for $99 last year. Now it goes for about $150. That being said, there's an enterprising Swiss man who makes credit-card sized clones of the five Voyager series calculators for very reasonable prices. See http://www.rpn-calc.ch/.

Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN?

[cas2000]

Why bother waiting when GNU Octave already runs on Android? Without the hassle (and expense) of proprietary software licensing.

Also available are GNU R (and thus CRAN), and python (with numpy and scipy) and numerous other free alternatives.

Certified dumb for school use?

[Animats]

Will this be a "certified dumb enough for school use during tests" device?

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[catchblue22]

IMHO, graphing calculators are largely an artifact of the past, except in the case of school examinations. Students need a calculator that is "dumb enough" to not write the entire exam for them and not be able to wirelessly share answers between neighbouring students. When a student enters the world outside school, the graphing calculator will be largely useless. If you are an engineer and you need "smart features" when doing a particular problem, you will likely use a proper computer and a dedicated software package tailored to the task. The only reason you might need a small calculator is to do quick calculations.

Myself, I'm a fan of the old HP 15C. No menus. Excellent key layout. Reverse polish notation. Everything you need, nothing you don't. Perfectly tailored to the task of doing quick calculations.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[TheStonepedo]

Dumb enough for primary/secondary school - maybe.
Dumb enough for college (or professional certification/licensure) - no way.
In courses from calculus to physics and beyond, scientific calculators without graphical bells and whistles are adequate for use with problems designed to demonstrate understanding of a subject.
If you really need data visualization use Matlb or Excel.
If you need to test for Matlab or Excel proficiency, let the students hand-write code on the exam.
It's just too easy to cheat with technology to use much of it during testing.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[AmiMoJo]

Excellent key layout.

A scroll wheel or maybe even a little pad would be nice, for easier editing of equations. Live update of graphs/results as you edit the equation, with a USB interface to dump results to a PC would be handy as well.

Adding a colour screen is pointless, it is the interface that needs an upgrade.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[MrEricSir]

Students need a calculator that is "dumb enough" to not write the entire exam for them and not be able to wirelessly share answers between neighbouring students.

Students need teachers/profs who are "dumb enough" not to realize that graphing calculators have enough memory to store an entire crib sheet of formulas that the students were supposed to memorize.

(Not that I'm speaking from experience here, of course.)

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[andywebs]

I call shenanigans. You made this amazing software that solved all your problems on every math exam, but didn't back it up or sell it to other students?

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[JonySuede]

I am really, really, really bad at organization and business.
The entire math curriculum was design around the limitation of that calculator. Also it helped that most problems that the calculator was unable to solve by itself had a methodical solution taught in the textbook.
So for the problems where the calculator was able to compute the correct answer, I would compute and pretty print the intermediary step backward from there. For the few problems that were beyond the calculator reach I would compute a lot of discriminants, keep the one that matched a known solutions family then I would extract the meaningful coefficient and pretty print the solution with the test used.Since that software was written on the ti-92 keyboard procrastinating instead of drilling myself with math problems in the directed exercise portion of the math classes.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[JonySuede]

I should not write and drink scotch ! Sorry for the missing words in the above reply, I deeply apologize but sadly I will not learn from that mistake.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[vlm]

If they grade on a curve and you're on a scholarship, I can easily imagine a "fair price" being too much for your competition to pay.

This technique is nothing new nor limited solely to 1st yr engineering. I was completely automating high school math problems including printing all intermediate results/steps two decades ago on a TI-81.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an engineer and sometimes it's more convenient to knock out small calculations on my old TI-83 plus graphing calculator I've kept around since high school, and that got me through college. I will note that the old HP RPN calculators are popular with the older generation though... HP remade them a few years back and they're reasonably priced on Amazon. I've thought about picking one up for the street cred, in lieu of a slide rule.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Man On Pink Corner]

It's just too easy to cheat with technology to use much of it during testing.

And yet nobody seems to see the obvious truth that the problem is with the test, and not the technology.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[0100010001010011]

Nothing still does units quite as easily as my TI-89. I take it everywhere and anytime we're with a supplier/customer that insists on non-metric (or even worse a mix of metric/non-metric) I just let the '89 sort it out.

I use it all the time to verify that I'm doing unit cancellation correction.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[0100010001010011]

In my case my program was not documented. Making the program was my 'studying'. I had a program for every ME course I took. For example in Fluids I had a very nice (but hard to understand) GUI. You gave it what you know and what you were looking for and it'd step you through the work. It'd show you the page numbers the equations were on and everything. Now I probably spent 4x as long making that program as my peers spent studying. And by time I ran through enough practice problems to help me learn the material I practically had the methodology memorized. Once I got to the test I almost always did fine without the program and then just used it to verify my results. But that's how I studied.

In Design of Experiments class I wrote a program that did every sort of test you could possibly want. Trying to figure that out on something as archaic as a TI-BASIC took some work but as in the case above it helped me understand what I was doing more than just running through it by hand. I saw it as 'teaching the computer to do something' which anytime I teach someone else to do something I find I often learn it better myself.

Now if I just handed that to someone else and said "here, this is how I got an A on that last test" they'd probably find it useless since it was essentially just my own personal crib sheet.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[sternmath]

Will this be a "certified dumb enough for school use during tests" device?

I don't think this is actually a leak. The units were on display at the TI booth at a math teacher conference this past week. What I've heard is that they will have a "Press-To-Test" feature, and so will be able to be hobbled for ACT and state tests that require dumb calculators.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't the (non-college, public) schools just foot the bill like they do with text books?

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[ikaruga]

IMHO, graphing calculators are largely an artifact of the past, except in the case of school examinations.

That is something that bothers me a lot. I'm not American, so forgive me my ignorance, but I still don't understand the reason why american schools care so much for their students to use calculators. As an Engineering college student in 2008 I bought a Hp 50g and honestly that was probably the worst purchase I've made during my college years. Both as a student and now as a professional I either use a real computer with something like MATlab/Octave or Excel for complex calculations, or Google/WolframAlpha for simple stuff. On the go I just use my smartphone or laptop.

Schools should be teaching students to think logically and to fully understand the physical and mathematical principles presented to them. Not to do number crushing. When I was in HS I barely used numbers at all. Most of my Math and Physics was done purely using letters(heck, I think it had more text than my freaking history tests). It might used to make sense to get students used with a calculator maybe in the 80s but nowadays with our advance CAD and numeric calculation tools I don't see the point.

I'm not saying graphing calculators should disappear. I think they are extremely useful for field engineers and really quick calculations. But these are niche areas and shouldn't be something for schools and students to bother with.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[LMariachi]

Why not issue standardized school-owned calculators to the students at the beginning of tests and forbid them from bringing their own?

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[swillden]

When a student enters the world outside school, the graphing calculator will be largely useless. If you are an engineer and you need "smart features" when doing a particular problem, you will likely use a proper computer and a dedicated software package tailored to the task. The only reason you might need a small calculator is to do quick calculations.

I dunno. I regularly use four different tools for doing calculations at work: kcalc, an HP 50G, octave and Mathematica. kcalc I use for trivial arithmetic and occasional base conversions, and I use it mainly because it's three keystrokes away without even lifting my hands from the keyboard. For heavier calculations, I grab the 50G (which BTW, I only have because I bought it for my kids many years after my 28S died. Then the teacher demanded they have a TI because she couldn't help them do stuff on the HP, so I took the HP), and I use that for almost everything, unless I need vector or matrix calculations, or to operate on data from files, in which case I use octave. For symbolic math, especially calculus (I forgot how to integrate long ago) and for visualizations, I reach for Mathematica.

Granted that I don't use anywhere near the 50G's capabilities, and certainly don't do any graphing on it, and the 15C (wish I still had mine -- lent it to my wife who was a schoolteacher at the time and some kid stole it out of her desk) would be almost as good (I like being able to see the stack), I think there's plenty of value in a solid, reliable high-end calculator.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[NJRoadfan]

When I was in school, if you brought your own calculator into a test, the proctor would only allow it to be used after they performed a memory wipe of the device.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Ambassador Kosh]

The point is that you have to design special case problems so you can do them with a normal calculator. You also have to use simpler math that gives terrible approximations in order to make them solveable on an exam with a simple calculator.

That is why I like classes that try to be more realistic. My professors encourage you to program your calculator to solve more advanced problems in them. Coding in things like the peng-robinson equation of state for thermodynamics is a very good idea.

Too many people just learn and are tested on ideal situations with simplified functions that give answers that are not even close to right. This is grossly negligent when we know methods that will get you within a few percent of the needed answer. What we need are better test circumstances where you can use real methods to solve real problems. It is absolutely pathetic that the certification exams for engineers (FE exams) are still to methods that are more than a decade old and will get you FIRED if you use them.

FE exam should probably take place on a real computer with excel/matlab and some other software based on what is being done. You should be solving real problems with real solutions.

I just finished an assignment where my partner and I solved the problem using iterative calculation and not assuming that things like density, viscosity etc where constant. We ended up with a much much better answer that those students that decided to do the problem by hand and in order to make it hand solvable they had to assume constant properties. There is no place for those methods anymore and the sooner we kick them to the curb on classes, exams and certifications the better since they have long since been kicked to the curb in the real world.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Suddenly_Dead]

When I was in school, there were tools floating around that let one avoid a memory wipe on a TI-83; they provided a menu that looked like the system menu, complete with the reset function, but which did nothing. IIRC, the most sophisticated ones also replaced the menu with the memory / saved programs, hiding them after the "reset" so it looked like something actually happened.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[thegarbz]

Students need teachers/profs who are "dumb enough" not to realize that graphing calculators have enough memory to store an entire crib sheet of formulas that the students were supposed to memorize.

Why should students memorise formulas? There's basis for that idea. In the real world there is always time and ability to look up formulas. Students should be graded on their ability to apply a wide range of formulas to a given task and not graded on their ability to memorise them.

I liked that about my maths classes. We were given a complete list of every formula we would need on the exam, and many we didn't. It wasn't about failing the course because we put the wrong variable in the wrong place. It was about failing the course for not being able to recognise the formula or its application in the first place.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Mabhatter]

That's what I did with my TI-85 back in 92... Each archetype of a problem you'd write a little problem for. Fortunately profs back then thought it was cute. Of course profs just made scarier tests...It would be six pages with six problems... One at the top of each page... And each page based on some part of the answer from the previous ones.

At the time they had us taking FORTRAN and that is when a lot of what we'd take for granted now "clicked". Of course back then you couldn't AFFORD a computer and FORTRAN compiler on a student budget. You learned to write stuff out then get to class and type it all in. Of course I work with guys 5-7 years older than me that learned RPG by filling out the pre-printed, fixed character spacing sheets and had to type them in.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[LMariachi]

Yeah, it seems a whole lot simpler and less time-consuming for the proctor to have a box of known-pure calculators. Can you imagine having to futz with, what, 30-100 student calculators before each exam?

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Jane Q. Public]

I once worked for a multinational engineering company. I asked several of the engineers (all of whom had reference books on the shelves) about how much they used their college math in their actual jobs.

Most of them told me that other than a few simple integrals or derivatives (which they could easily look up... the equation, that is, not the solution) they mainly used simple algebra and trigonometry.

There were exceptions. I helped with the programming of some finite element flow modeling. All of that work was supervised by a (very talented and renowned) mathematician whose work probably most of the engineers there didn't fully understand anyway. But that's why he was hired.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[AmiMoJo]

Exams shouldn't test a student's ability to memorize stuff, they should just list all required formulas.

Obviously you are going to remember the basic stuff like F=MA or V=IR because they are so fundamental, but for anything else looking up the required information is perfectly acceptable. About the only time you will ever need to recall random formulas from memory are job interviews, which are equally stupid ways of measuring ability.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[nine-times]

That still doesn't really explain for me why, with smartphones as cheap and thin and nice as we have, graphing calculators are still big overpriced blocks of under-powered computing with crappy screens. You'd think they'd either be able to make them nicer, or else make them cheaper.

Students need a calculator that is "dumb enough" to not write the entire exam for them and not be able to wirelessly share answers between neighbouring students.

Well it seems to me you could still start with something comparable an Android phone, include specialized software, and not include any wireless communications. Either way, it's not really going to stop kids from cheating somehow. And perhaps more importantly, when we hit the point where we all have calculators in our pockets that can solve these things for us, I'd question how vital it is to get kids to memorize it all, whether they're interested or not.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not. I had a TI-85 when I took the Professional Engineers exam. I had to go get a TI-30 just for the test.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not entirely fair.

Part of passing a math test is proving that you can solve examples of the class of equations presented on the test. Allowing a calculator that can take the equation as input and return the solution as output makes it impossible to verify that the student can solve those problems themselves. It's basically the same problem as letting students talk to each other during the exam (you wouldn't know which ones understood the problem and which ones wrote down the answer someone else gave them).

The only solution other than prohibiting certain classes of calculators would be to re-design the curriculum such that math is no longer it's own class and is instead tought in other classes (physics, chemistry, accounting, etc) as a means to whatever ends the class is interested in.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[Man On Pink Corner]

The only solution other than prohibiting certain classes of calculators would be to re-design the curriculum such that math is no longer it's own class and is instead tought in other classes (physics, chemistry, accounting, etc) as a means to whatever ends the class is interested in.

I think that's worth exploring. The problem with the obsession over calculators on math tests is simple: if the student is going to forget the techniques ten minutes after the final exam, then what difference does it make if they 'cheated' by using a calculator or not? They will certainly use software in their real world careers.

IMHO, unless you are going to work at Math Works or Wolfram -- in which case you should be majoring in math and not engineering or chemistry or physics or whatever -- your time is better spent learning the math in an application-oriented context.

Re:Certified dumb for school use?

[houghi]

The one time I made a crib sheet, I made it so well and so complete that when the test came, I did not need it anymore.
Afterward I realized that I spend more time perfecting the crib sheet and thus rewriting the formula's then if I would have doing the actual studying.

Really, Ti

[connor4312]

Yet, for $100+, they still can't beat the resolution of gift-shop picture slideshow keychains. Obligatory XKCD reference.

Re:Really, Ti

[makomk]

I suspect part of the reason they're upgrading is because you can't get screens as shit as their old one for a reasonable price anymore. Seriously. The last time I looked, 320x240 colour screens actually appeared to be cheaper.

Re:Really, Ti

[ericloewe]

Z80s at 15MHz must be getting harder to get, too. They're already using 150KB of RAM and limiting it to 24k, too. At some point, you might as well upgrade it.

Re:Really, Ti

[CastrTroy]

Yeah but it sure us nice being able to use it for a whole semester without having to change the batteries. Not to mention that I don't ever recall having to reboot my TI-86 in the middle of an exam. People complain about some of the outdated specs, but these things were reliable and got the job done. I love my android phone but wouldn't trust it to last a 3 hour exam followed by another 3 hour exam.

Re:Really, Ti

[nine-times]

Yeah, frankly I'm surprised people are still using these. It seems like they should be able to make an iPhone/Android app that could do much better. For $100, I'd think they could make something comparable to a cheap Android phone in terms of computing power and capabilities. If they're worried about power consumption, maybe they could switch to a high-quality e-paper display. If they're worried about security, they could make a device that lacked network connectivity.

Re:Really, Ti

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything, ATMEL, their AVR product line, and the Arduino have shown that there's still plenty of market for cheap as all hell 8-bit CPU's. Zilog is still making the Z-80 product-line. TI has totally ridden the cost curve down over the years, to the point these things are now ridiculously profitable for them. I imagine at this point the plastics for the case, the PCB and the packaging actually constitute a significant percentage of the total manufacturing cost. That was not the case (no pun intended) two decades ago when these things first came on the market. I remember getting my first TI-81 around 1992, maybe a year or two after it came out. Back then, TI was actually pushing the envelope in terms of the amount of electronics, display, etc. you could get in that size package for $100 with decent physical durability. Two decades on, not so much.

Re:Really, Ti

[ncc74656]

Z80s at 15MHz must be getting harder to get, too. They're already using 150KB of RAM and limiting it to 24k, too. At some point, you might as well upgrade it.

You can still get brand-new 65C02s (now at 14 MHz); a quick shows Mouser has them in stock. I'd think the Z80 would be similarly available, especially given all of the embedded systems that have used it over the past few decades.

Re:Really, Ti

[CaptainLard]

Especially since TI themselves make a wide variety of advanced processor cores with built in touch screen display controllers. I'm guessing its more to do with schools requiring them and thus guaranteeing a market so why spend on R&D?

Re:Really, Ti

[NJRoadfan]

WDC still produces the 65c816 as well. The 14Mhz speed is a mere suggestion though, since that's the fastest WDC can test the chips with their equipment!

High school

[girlintraining]

I seem to recall the major feature of any electronic calculator was the ability to write 80085 and make your classmates giggle.

Re:High school

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Well, you have to admit it's an improvement: when you dial 8.0085 on a slide rule, it's not nearly as funny.

Re:High school

[cashman73]

And today, you can take a photo of actual boobs using your iPhone, and get arrested!

Re:High school

[Metabolife]

Only a backwards 3704558 would write 80085 into a calculator.

Re:High school

[robi5]

> I seem to recall the major feature of any electronic calculator was the ability to write 80085 and make your classmates giggle.

Isn't it 8085?

Re:High school

[david.given]

You're underestimating the amount of innuendo a skilled operator can extract from a slide rule. They are, after all, far more phallic than your average calculator.

Just don't try it with one of those newfangled circular slide rules.

Re:High school

[TheGratefulNet]

laugh all you want, sonny, but my slide rule still is using the same set of batteries today that it shipped with.

Re:High school

[Guy Harris]

> I seem to recall the major feature of any electronic calculator was the ability to write 80085 and make your classmates giggle.

Isn't it 8085?

If your calculator can show "Bob"s, that's pretty cool.

Re:High school

[Anonymous Coward]

laugh all you want, sonny, but my slide rule still is using the same set of batteries today that it shipped with.

I used the same solar calculator for 20+ years. And yes, I own and can use a slide rule.

Superseded

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, it's difficult to see this as anything but too little, too late (for non-high school students, at least) when the Wolfram Alpha app on smartphones is so much more powerful.

I understand that it has its market, but I really wish TI, Casio, etc. would really up the ante and produce a sub-$200, awesome, dedicated CAS-driven calculator. It's difficult to see a reason why this isn't feasible.

Also, relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/768/

Re:Superseded

[RightwingNutjob]

Power usage. I've got the same set of AAA batteries in my TI83+ that I put in back in college, and the thing still works. iphones and their ilk need to be recharged every day, sometimes more than once, just to run basic functionality. For quick calculations at your desk, or more to the point, away from your desk, nothing will beat a dead simple, low power device with physical buttons.

Re:Superseded

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nspire-CAS (shade of grey, extra longevity power) and Nspire-CAS-CX (color) are not that bad. To me, they are better than the Voyager200. The main problem is key layout (a,b,c vs. qwerty) and lack of macros / configurable keyboard shortcut.

The killer feature is lua support, so you don't have to learn or remember ti-basic anymore. Of course, they are mostly useless outside of engineering classes. MatLab and Matematica are better.

Re:Superseded

[TheStonepedo]

I have the same CR2032 battery in my TI-30X that it came with in 2001.
Your AAAs are likely in a compartment that doesn't require a screwdriver to open because your graphing calculator is an electron-guzzling behemoth.

Re:Superseded

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Honestly, it's difficult to see this as anything but too little, too late (for non-high school students, at least) when the Wolfram Alpha app on smartphones is so much more powerful.

Too powerful. TI, cynically but effectively, has targeted the overwhelming majority of their calculators at the educational market, roughly in the middle school to undergrad range, depending on local and instructor policies. To this end, they gimp the devices hard enough that teachers and standardized test admins mostly don't freak out about them.

Yeah, for everything except keyfeel(which could be solved by a $20 USB or BT HID keypad with a calculator layout), the ship has sailed long ago in terms of power, performance, features, even price; but it'll be a cold day in hell before "So, I'm just going to bring this internet connected device in to the test and connect to one or more gigantic outside databases(and possibly a confederate who is helping me with the questions), that's ok by you, right?" goes over well. That is TI's target market, over which they enjoy a substantial grip.

Re:Superseded

[Waccoon]

I found out the hard way, many times, that batteries that old should be replaced before they die.

Those black, crusty stains on my wooden dresser, and the corroded stereo I dropped off at the recycling center, weren't due to water damage.

Re:Superseded

[swillden]

My HP28S was slain by leaking AAA alkaline batteries. They should be replaced every few years, even if they're still functional.

Re:Superseded

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone on here saying "LOLOL MY ANDROID PHONE IS MORE POWERFUL" seems to be completely ignoring this fact.

If you're in the field without power then you need a machine that will:
A) Run on replaceable batteries. Not rechargeable crap that requires a 120 volt AC connection, a charger, and some hours to fill the device.
A2) Does not require stupid numbers of batteries. This thing has to sip power, not chug it like a frat boy at a kegger. This is where almost all modern smartphones fail and just about every single calculator excels.
B) Is easy to use in the field. Try punching buttons on a touchscreen phone while wearing gloves.
C) Is durable. You drop your fancy android phone on a rock and it's destroyed. You drop your calculator and it just keeps on running.

Re:Superseded

[Hognoxious]

The ideal tool would appear to be a slide rule.

Re:Superseded

[Anonymous Coward]

>the same set of AAA batteries in my TI83+ that I put in back in college

I'll bet you the cost of a TI83+ that those batteries have almost corroded through their casings and will start to leak soon ... or that they already have.

There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are there still calculators? I'm actually wondering.

Wouldn't our smartphones be capable of everything of what a calculator can do?

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Bill Dimm]

Wouldn't our smartphones be capable of everything of what a calculator can do?

Yes, and more, like allowing a student to text an answer to another student during a test. Still, it is impressive that they think they can charge so much for a device whose only selling point is that it is too hobbled to cheat with.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Kenoli]

Wouldn't our smartphones be capable of everything of what a calculator can do?

Certainly. But a dedicated calculator is still going to have some advantages, such as vastly superior battery life.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

The easy way around is to create some sort of control app for the instructor, and then require that students in a particular class/section/whatever register with the instructor's control app for the exam period. The app could notify the instructor if it was exited out of, or switched to the background, etc.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Certainly. But a dedicated calculator is still going to have some advantages, such as vastly superior battery life.

So if you have an exam that lasts as long as some cricket matches, you're golden.

Seriously, from a practical point of view - why does this matter much? At this point we're all used to charging our smart devices nightly or every other day.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would require a platform that is even more locked down than today's smartphones.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yes, and more, like allowing a student to text an answer to another student during a test.

If I were teaching a science or math class in this day and age, I'd consider purchasing a cell phone jammer. I'd announce it to the class well ahead of the test, and offer accommodation to anyone who's dependent on a medical device that requires the ability to communicate wirelessly (e.g. wireless insulin pumps).

Then I'd tell the students they can use a cell phone calculator, or tablet calculator, if they wanted.

Yeah, jammers are illegal here in the states. For this purpose I can't say I'd have any moral qualms about using one.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash: You are not the world. Please adjust to this fact, and your life will get much easier.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Cinder6]

Yes, smartphones are capable of everything a calculator can do, and more. However, what I find perplexing is that, no matter how many calculator apps I try, I can't find one that I actually prefer over my old TI-83 Plus. Here are a few edges it has over calculator apps I've tried:

1. Battery life.
2. Physical keys.
3. Variable support. Even the best apps I've tried don't let you store many variables, or as easily.
4. Stupid easy and fast scripting abilities.

There are also some subjective intangibles, familiarity being a big one. I also like that there are no distractions with a dedicated calculator. The only thing I want that it doesn't have is RPN support, but I can always buy an HP-50g if I really need it (I don't).

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

How so? It'd probably work pretty well on the iPhone.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Glendale2x]

I have RealCalc on my phone, but at the end of the day I still reach for my TI-86 (home) or 92 (work) on my desk. Probably because it's quicker: no need to wake it, unlock the screen, navigate to the app, launch the app, then constantly repeat the first two steps when it invariably goes to sleep before I'm really done.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Glendale2x]

I have RealCalc on my phone, but at the end of the day I still reach for my TI-86 (home) or 92 (work) on my desk. Probably because it's quicker: no need to wake it, unlock the screen, navigate to the app, launch the app, then constantly repeat the first two steps when it invariably goes to sleep before I'm really done.

Whoops, I meant TI-89 at work, not 92.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

For school.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. My teenage daughter is using the same calculator (Casio) in middle school that I was using in her age 34 years back. Same battery and all.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Interesting, but it's not actually a counter-argument to my statement.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[couchslug]

" Still, it is impressive that they think they can charge so much for a device whose only selling point is that it is too hobbled to cheat with."

As with textbook prices, "assraping a captive audience" pays off handsomely.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[lister king of smeg]

Some of the TI graphing calculators can share answers anyway using an the built in IR port or bluetooth that some of the newer TI's have already anyway. Most teachers I have had don't care what model of calculator you use as long as it is a TI. Math classes may as well be graded by who has the most expensive TI branded calculator. For one of the standardized tests I was forced to take they only allowed TI branded calculators and would not let me use my cheap casio scientific calculator because use of all other brands of calculators were considered to be "cheating". So they supplied me with a four function TI branded calculator to do the timed test on. Meanwhile some of my classmates did have the top of the line TI graphing calculators with all of the equations preprogrammed in.
Hell several of my text books have contained TI-86 specific instructions throughout.
TI own the academic calculator world and won't let that go that is the real reason that they don't allow phones

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and they're quite capable of enabling a student to provide an answer without knowing how that answer was arrived at, thus undermining the underlying educational goal.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's rooted

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[jittles]

Too hobbled to cheat with? You can store a lot of notes inside the calculator, and most of them are able to do your basic calculus exam

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[CastrTroy]

Might have a little trouble getting a cell phone jammer that doesn't affect the next room over (or then next 5 rooms on either side). Using dumb calculators is actually a very good solution. If I were a teacher, I'd actually opt for no calculators at all, or at least limit students to very basic scientific calculators such as the TI-30. Any exam in university that allowed fancy TI-86 calculators had about half the class with crib sheets programmed into them.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Anonymous Coward]

And there are ways of checking that... and yes, ways around it, and yes, ways around that, too. The teacher catches you doing something not recorded on the control app and you have some explaining to do.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[fermion]

These calculators are present only for exams. They do enough that a some complex problems can be given, but not enough so the calculator can do the problems.

Strictly speaking they are not necessary. A test can be written to allow a student to do without the calculator, rather than the current situation in which there are convolutions so that certain problems cannot be easily done with a calculator.

A phone simply is too uncontrolled. Questions can be specially written to counteract the capabilities of the TI calculator. It would be impossible to do so with a phone.

For real work, calculators are hardly needed. There are RPN apps for every device. The only reason that TI still makes these calculators, and tax dollars are spent on them, is that some think teaching the calculator is a good thing.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Fjandr]

Despite how old these calculators are, app software has still not caught up to them in terms of usability and efficiency. Phones are not built to input mathematical data, and touchscreen apps lack tactile feel. Entering (and editing) equations on a touchscreen is not something I'd wish even on an enemy.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[sixsixtysix]

then why on earth aren't public schools buying these calculators like they do the books? or are they? i have no idea.

Re:There's not an app for that!?

[Ambassador Kosh]

That is why I like more advanced engineering classes. Any calculator. Open notes, books, homework, previous exams etc.

The tests are not based on memorization at all. They are based on real problems with real solutions. Most of my books have 50+ pages of tables at the back on various properties and you are expected to know how to use those tables. On exams you have to figure out what you are trying to solve for, what assumptions you should make, what you should look up etc. The exams are very hard but also much more real world.

In the real world nobody cares if you memorize various equations of state, VLE equations, etc. They care if given pretty much any resource you need you can solve the problem accurately and on time.

Why isn't this just an app?

[Anonymous Coward]

TI could release the official TI-xx app for the iPhone/Android, sell different features, etc, and probably make a boat load of money.

Re:Why isn't this just an app?

[guttentag]

TI could release the official TI-xx app for the iPhone/Android, sell different features, etc, and probably make a boat load of money.

Because an iPhone/android phone on the desk is even more of a distraction/cheat-risk than a graphing calculator that runs arkanoid. My math teacher used to make each of us wipe the memory in front of him before each test.

Re:Why isn't this just an app?

[Anonymous Coward]

MirageOS on the TI83+ had a nice app for that, it'd replace the standard wipe screen with a customised.
Showed exactly the same output, making teachers think that it's wiped. Programs would be hidden, but a certain key combination would make em appear again.

Worked quite well for our class.

That said, I don't think the teachers actually expected it to work in a class mainly filled with IT students.

just emulate it

[kenorland]

Except for nostalgia for the hardware itself, I don't see why anybody would buy these. You can get excellent emulators for pretty much any of these calculators on both Android and iPhone. And their interfaces actually work well on phones too. Even the phone hardware is often cheaper than these calculators.

Re:just emulate it

[Iceykitsune]

and your friend can text you the answers on your phone.

Re:just emulate it

[_Shad0w_]

I suspect the only people who really use scientific calculators nowadays are students in exams. I don't know what the rules are like elsewhere, but when I did GCSEs and A-Levels, many years ago, exam boards had lists of allowed calculators and mobile phones were banned from exam rooms.

Re:just emulate it

[WaffleMonster]

Except for nostalgia for the hardware itself, I don't see why anybody would buy these.

Test taking - calculators do not have WiFi or Cellular radios.

Keypad - Physical keypads are superior to touch screens.

Re:just emulate it

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably because you haven't tried.

First of all, touch-screens can't compete with a dedicated hardware keyboard specifically designed for punching numbers, just like no sane person would try typing a novel on a sw-keyboard, period.

Secondly, it's nice to not have to frequently have to charge your calculator like you do with your phone. Batteries last for months if not years, and it's usually not a case of "oh, shucks, battery's dead". Neither will necessary communication impair your ability to use your calculator, neither by draining the battery nor by DOSing it.

Thirdly, calculators are expensive because they have a captive market, students, who just have to buy them, usually TI ones.

Re:just emulate it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are graded based on your *answers*, instead of you *understanding the concept*, then your country is DOING EDUCATION WRONG!

True understanding can't be texted. It can also not be put into a multiple-choice form. EVER.

But hey, in a sane world, the kids would see understanding concepts and cheating the same way they see it in *games*. Where cheaters are laughed at and socially excluded in competitions, and cheating in single-player games is only there as a little helper to keep you motivated over frustrating parts. (Since keeping on going is key, to learn the frustrating parts later).
And where kids have fun and show pride in managing to understand and solve problems!
Imagine that!

High scores, acquired without cheating... THOSE are the real grades that matter! THAT is how education should be. Then all those artifacts of our fucked-up system... like kids hating school, it being no fun, not motivating, it feeling pointless and useless, and kids only doing it because they have to... would go away in the blink of an eye!

Re:just emulate it

[Anonymous Coward]

Some engineers do need to pull some calculations in the field, and if you are in a construction site then consumer smartphones,tablets or laptops are not the right tool for that environment.

Re:just emulate it

[0100010001010011]

Physical buttons. Not just physical buttons but physical buttons but physical buttons mapped to all the functions one would regularly use on a calculator.

Every time I try to use an emulator or 'soft' "scientific calculator" I find data entry is much slower.

Re:just emulate it

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the feedback of the buttons and out of every iPhone app I've tried I can't find one that has a better layout than my TI-83. I can't use gloves on a touch-screen device. Also my iPhone doesn't have enough battery to get run constantly quite like my TI-83. I can't use my phone on tests.

Lastly there's more support resources I've found out there for the TI calculators and programming language than any random calculator application. The ecosystem supports the TI platform really well so I am never lost on how to do something!

Re:just emulate it

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I love my TI-89 because you just punch the keys and get a result. There's no booting up a computer, loading the software package, typing a bunch of shit on a keyboard that doesn't have the necessary keys, etc. You just open the calculator, hit "on", then use it.

Re:just emulate it

[Anonymous Coward]

Like another commenter noted, physical buttons. Here's an excellent application for a graphing calculator - http://www.tsdmeter.com/ And why they didn't choose a smart device: http://www.tsdmeter.com/calculator-app/calculator-vs-phone/

Re:just emulate it

[Urkki]

In the real world, accepted final grades that get you to the better school are what matter to the individual student. How you got the grades does not matter, as long as you got them. Those who are blind to this simple reality, be they teachers trying to prevent cheating, or students refusing to cheat while not having the talent or determination to succeed without cheating and lacking the courage to tell on cheaters, are the ones who suffer (well, teacher may not suffer, possibly the opposite if their students score higher on average...).

It's a cruel world out there...

My Casio fx 82 still works

[G3ckoG33k]

after 30 years! Used, overused and abused. Thrown in the wall, broken, reassembled. Loved.

Unfortunately my even older Texas Instruments was stolen some thirty years ago.

Before those, at school we used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-59_/_TI-58

And before that I got my Citizen. Don't recall what model though.

Those were the days.

BTW, is there no web page with images of all these old models? For nostalgia.

Re:My Casio fx 82 still works

[Stele]

I have a Casio fx 7000 that I still use. It's almost 30 years old, and only on the third battery. In high school I used to write programs on it that turned the display into a drawing program. You could plot lines using the crosshair. I used to draw flight simulator displays on it and trick my friends into thinking I'd written a flight simulator on it.

XKCD

[mr100percent]

Relevant XKCD

Re:XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

That's two of you faggots now. Both modded funny for some reason. Nothing original or funny about linking to xkcd.

TI-30LCD - pictures at http://www.datamath.org

[G3ckoG33k]

Just found http://www.datamath.org/

http://www.datamath.org/Sci/Slimline/TI-30LCD.htm

What a joke!

[Billly Gates]

This is 2012. Not 1982 anymore.

The only reason TI is popular is because they pay off textbook makers and contribute to elections for school board executives. $120 for something with 1/5000th of the computing power of a smart phone? A rip off.

When I moved to Canada senior year at highschool they were all dumbfounded why I had such a strange device that costed so much. In this day and age wouldn't an Android shit tablet for the same price with a crippled version of Maple be better?

Call me cynical but I did not understand why 32k of ram more is still a premium for these calculators when I went back to school in 2004. I felt like I was living in 20 years in the past. The profit margins have to be insane

Re:What a joke!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bet most of the cost is in the components driving legacy software and the enclosure of calculator.

Re:What a joke!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, I have a perfect condition TI-85 I'd sell for $120. Anyone want it?

Re:What a joke!

[arth1]

Come back when you have a TI-88 for sale.

I had one on order, and then they cancelled it. It was planned to be the HP-41 killer, but never made it because TI thought that the future of calculating was with PCs. So they came out with TI PCs instead, which was an astonishing success. Not.

Its time for TI and Casio to bite the bullet

[Viol8]

Either bring out a calculator that is essentially a programmable scientific computer with a PROPER programming language, (not some hobbled joke that would have embarrassed an 8 bit home computer) and a PROPER display , or just call it a day , accept smartphones can do everything a graphic calc can do except better and just stick to producing cheap school calculators that can do logs, trig and notalot else. TI sort of tried with the TI-92 about 10 years ago but the display was a joke and it was dog slow. Oh , and cost a small fortune.

Re:Its time for TI and Casio to bite the bullet

[ericloewe]

Older (meaning non-Nspire) can be programmed in C and assembly, the others can be jailbroken to allow it. Hardly counts as a hobbled joke, especially considering they usually are essentially 8-bit computers (TI-83/84 have Z80 processors, TI-92/Voyage 200 have Motorola 68ks).
Displays could use improvements, but there's not too much to gain from moving beyond what the Nspire CXs have.

I have to disagree about the TI-92 being slow. It is compared to something modern (An Nspire makes it feel like it was the slowest thing on earth), but if you want real epic slowness, try an HP 40G with the original SATURN processor.

Re:Its time for TI and Casio to bite the bullet

[Viol8]

"Older (meaning non-Nspire) can be programmed in C and assembly, the others can be jailbroken to allow it"

I meant without having to fuck around with a PC to do it. A machine that can't be properly programmed without using another device to do it is not properly programmable as far as a casual user is concerned.

Re:Its time for TI and Casio to bite the bullet

[ericloewe]

You can write the programs on the calculator itself (except for the Nspire), but it's not very pleasant.

Still using my TI-85

[_Shad0w_]

Well, I say using: it sees very little real use any more, sadly. I still carry it in my backpack though.

Re:Still using my TI-85

[badlikeacobra]

I'm a high school physics teacher, and I use my TI-85 every day. I've had that calculator since 1994, and it's the one calculator I never let the students borrow when they forget theirs. The kids laugh when they see the calculator and find out its as old as they are. Then, they are amazed, and a bit jealous, that it will do unit conversions and has the built in ability to solve polynomials.

Re:Still using my TI-85

[codepigeon]

I have been using my TI-85 for some online classes recently. I suddenly realize how much I love a backlit screen!

Re:Still using my TI-85

[_Shad0w_]

I always found the unit conversions handy, and the constants were also handy in physics. Oh and the fact that it could do complex numbers.

Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

TI-fail. We've been talking, they haven't been listening. We don't want this (and I'm fairly sure I speak for Faculty and Students alike)

Don't get me wrong, color and higher resolution would be nice, but I'd much rather they sell the current device for what is more along the lines of what it costs to produce. Probably TI would still do quite well if they sold these beasts for $20....$120 is just ridiculous highway rapery prices.

Look, we (the faculty) need our students to use these. Are they outdated? Yes....but even though the students would get much more use out of tablets (which cost about the same) the TI83/84 are designed to be hard to program (and easy to reset). That coupled with the fact that they are the most sophisticated computational device that doesn't have WIFI access, we can be confident they give the students a level playing field during an exam of what is pretty much still the accepted amount of technological reliance needed to assist (but not interfere) with instruction of concepts from College Algebra/Calculus/Trig, etc. This is why we continue to use them. However, at the college I teach at, most of these are purchased by students who use them for one semester and then they become a worthless brick to the student. There isn't anything you can do with them besides try to resell them to someone else, and the cost is comparable to the textbook price, ie, significant (and don't get me started about book prices)

Its been a policy at my college that College Algebra (and above) courses require TI-83/84 calculators. However, as college continues to become more expensive many faculty are piloting alternatives. We're even getting to the point where we're considering letting the students use tablet/smartphone calculator apps (if they want) and just requiring they use a TI-83/84 at exams, which they would be able to check out or rent from the department during exams.

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is a math savant jerkoff. Go fucking watch wopner.

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell them that color can be easier to use for signalling between test takers......

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution: Import $20 alternative in bulk, sell them to students for $50, offer courses on how to translate from TI instructions to alternative. Students save money, your school should about break even and TI gets a well-deserved fuck you.

Bonus credits for teaming up with other institutions.

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

pencil and paper? everyone should be able to get by using only sand and a stick.

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

That coupled with the fact that they are the most sophisticated computational device that doesn't have WIFI access, we can be confident they give the students a level playing field during an exam of what is pretty much still the accepted amount of technological reliance needed to assist (but not interfere) with instruction of concepts from College Algebra/Calculus/Trig, etc.

(Shrug) I wouldn't hire an engineer who couldn't figure out a way to cheat on a math test.

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they innovate.

  E-ink screen would seem to be ideal for a calculator.
  A more powerful flavor of basic and a IDE on the calculator?

  Phones, generic tablets suck as calculators. You punch numbers into a touch screen? Its like typing an essay with a 4" touch screen phone, Get serious. I will pay $100 for a device that actually makes my job easier and faster.

  How about talk to text book companies so the calculator is the textbook. You load up the chapter that you are up to, it shows you on the e-ink screen the question (which is full sized on the reverse side of the calculator ?) and then you solve it. It keeps track of all the questions you have done, where your making mistakes. You make a teachers cradle so during class you go up to the teachers desk, it uploads how much you have done, where your weaknesses are, teacher talks and assists you, shows you what your doing wrong and why its wrong,you go back to sit down and keep working away.

Or make the e-reader separate but talks to your calculator. Frankly I think students would still fail maths tests if they bought their text books in anyway. You might as well let them. If they can do the maths, that's important, not cramming your head full of junk for precisely 2 hrs.

However, what TI has is an awesome retro computer thing for games.

Re:Math Prof here...

[BlueCoder]

For $120 a pop you can get a cheap tablet today and they are only going to get cheaper. I predict $25 and $50 cheap versions to be as cheap as they will get. On this hardware you will be able to run android, windows 8, or anything else designed for a touch interface.

Software the equivalent of mathlab or autocad.

For tests you can give out tablets that will have permitted apps already installed and the device hardened to being modified. Same approved apps students use on their own personal devices. Simple to reset to a base configuration. For this purpose I expect apple to give away much hardware in order to compete (for heart and minds) with cheaper android commodity hardware.

Lastly schools need to update practices. The paper book library is obsolete. It really really is. It and maybe a few school rooms can be converted into study halls/test taking rooms. A little bit of money to remodel them and you can install a the equivalent of a faraday cage and prevent radio signals entering or leaving the room. Each room would have it's own wifi router and you can only connect to it. Simple desks could have optional integrated wireless chargers under the desk surface and or USB and network ports. Put that woodshop to use!

Basically 50-100 devices. Start with something like 25. If all the schools in the each or a bunch of states get together they could spec, prototype and bulk order directly from china. Don't see why you would need consumer devices except for apple which again they should more or less give you since it promotes the students using apple for their personal devices. You would also want to spec your own devices to make them a little more rugged. If students really want to they can purchase one of the school tablets at it's student store.

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's several utilities that let you "fake reset" a TI-83/83+. They can repalce the "reset" menu option with one that doesn't actually do anything. IIRC, you can bypass this by taking the batteries out, waiting a moment, putting them back in, _then_ doing it (i.e. reloading the calculator without the menu-replacer), but I vaguely recall there being a way to get programs to start at calculator startup too, which would break that.

Basically, no, they're not "easy to reset", nor are they particularly "hard" to program, seeing how easily we swapped programs around back when I was in highschool. I'm frankly amazed these things are still in use.

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

My apologies for the harsh comment, but you must of not read the part about "No Wi-Fi"... Tablets are great! But try to find one without ANY connectivity whatsoever except for physical connectivity to update software and applications and what-not.

Re:Math Prof here...

[colinrichardday]

I suppose lowering your paranoia is out of the question?

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing you can do is randomize key values and question order on each individual test with a small script, store and checksum on the question sheet. That way the students can share whatever they like, but chances are high it's not going to be in their benefit.

Perhaps a partial solution?

B.

Re:Math Prof here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to program???

I made all sorts of various games in the 90 minutes or so my pre-calculus class ran for. I would simply write down the program as I built it so that when they were wiped I'd type it all back in. Had a racing game with randomly generated text, a 21 pick-up-stick game, rock paper scissors, and a game where you had to collect 'o' and run away from 'X'

HP calculators

[LaughingRadish]

Those who enjoy and cherish HP calculators may be interested in the DIY4X. It's a homebrewed effort to recreate the HP 41 and 42 calculators with enhancements. Is HP watching? A few individual HP employees are, but it's not clear if HP is officially aware.

Re:HP calculators

[Anonymous Coward]

HP calculator employee here. I have his number in my phone. Our group itself is aware of stuff like this.

HP as a large entity though doesn't seem to realize that the calculator group still exists and that HP sells calculators though.

Re:HP calculators

[colinrichardday]

HP improve its calculators? Are you mad, Laughing Radish? How would the CEO have time to acquire Compaq?

Re:HP calculators

[silly_sysiphus]

Any chance you can comment on if we might possibly someday see an HP-50G successor with a properly sized/located ENTER button? :) I love my 49G+ aside from the stupid button's location/size....

I Love This Place

[rueger]

a student member of a popular graphing calculator hacking site

yeah, that my kind of crowd!

It's a calculator!

[MindPrison]

I would like a calculator to be just a calculator and nothing else.

One of the things that I like about my TI83+ is that when I power it on, it's there, ready to use instantly.
I also have the TI-nspire with the 84+ keypad plugin, and it's a joke. If I don't use it for a few days, the system has to RE-LOAD and it's like booting windows on a calculator, very annoying. And the touch-pad is a joke too. You have to fiddle with it for minutes in order to have the arrow appear.

TI - find back to your roots, let a calculator just be a calculator. I want it to be ready when I am.

320x240 LCD?

[ArcadeMan]

Perfect resolution for all the old arcade games. Do we have CPU and RAM specs for this new calculator? Any chance of running a custom version of MAME on that thing?

Re:320x240 LCD?

[jfdavis668]

Probably still a Z80 processor. Doesn't need MAME, no need for emulation. Good thing TI finally beat CGA graphics.

Re:320x240 LCD?

[elfprince13]

well, there is this

Re:320x240 LCD?

[cyberdime]

Given the $100+ price tag, they should have put a small e-Ink screen in there. A $99 Nook Simple Touch (without those annoying Amazon ads) has a faster CPU and bigger RAM. Color e-Ink screens are coming up, so maybe that can also be an option.

Pointless self-hurting nostalgia

[Anonymous Coward]

I can have a full mathematics suite on my laptop, Qalculate! for my quick calculation needs, and basically a full programming language with graphing (that beats the hell out of any standalone calculator) on my phone.

There is no need for standalone calculators anymore, and just like an old console that can be 100% perfectly emulated on a modern computer, the only reason it still exists, is because some ultra-conservatives (which is essentially what nostalgia is) think back to "better times" that never were better except in their soft-blur-filtered false memories.

Give me GHCi with a decent graphing library over anything else anytime! (Yes, on my phone too! It has a real keyboard and actually is a full computer, unlike your iShit.)

FWIW

[Gripp]

Going forward when I see a youtube comment asking if the video was recorded by a calculator I'll know it's a serious question.

did the plug fall out, again?

[TheGratefulNet]

sigh. we've been having no end of trouble with the graphics fluid coming out if the plug is not properly sealed.

and now the 84 is leaking? damn. the last ECO must not have held.

I never liked the color idea, anyway. I see a red font and I want to paint it black.

HP-15c fiasco: HP doesn't want your money

[Anonymous Coward]

They recently released a batch of HP-15c calculators as a Limited Edition.

Sold out in a few hours, as every engineer and scientist thinks this is the absolute best calculator ever made. Everyone screaming and shouting for them to release more and make it an actual available product in the modern range.

So what does HP do? Well, nothing. They can shift millions of the things and they won't, because they just don't care. Not about their (potential) customers, not about money, not about making good products. Gold mine, these things.

I hate chinese knock-offs, but when a shady-market HP-15c clone comes out I'll order a whole shipping container of them.

Re:HP-15c fiasco: HP doesn't want your money

[arth1]

I hate chinese knock-offs, but when a shady-market HP-15c clone comes out I'll order a whole shipping container of them.

There is a 15C knock-off, but Swiss,not Chinese:
http://www.rpn-calc.ch/

The downside is that it's much smaller and without the HP feel of the keys. The plus side is that it uses the original ROMs, so it's more HP-15C compatible than the HP-15C-LE is.

Re:HP-15c fiasco: HP doesn't want your money

[Z00L00K]

Suddenly I wanted a mod option "AWESOME!!!" to use here and now!

Re:HP-15c fiasco: HP doesn't want your money

[Jane Q. Public]

If you want the 15c, get the emulator which works exactly the same and uses the actual code from the HP 15c ROM.

Unless you HAVE to have it in your pocket, doing a little searching and getting it free is much better than laying out $$$.

Re:HP-15c fiasco: HP doesn't want your money

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the emulator for PC and an iPhone app, but they don't compare well to having an actual device with tactile buttons.

But you have a point, it is rather peculiar to use an antique calculator when you're sitting in front of a PC that is much faster and has way better software for doing that (R, Mathematica, whatever).

Still, I needs to have my preciousss.

$120+ bucks for this?

[JustNiz]

OK I officially dont get it.
What is the attraction of a graphing calculator these days?
I mean couldnt you just get a smartphone app that does the same thing but better? Doesn't the average smartphone have a much more powerful cpu and much better graphics?

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 2 free apps for my galaxy s3 that does everything my old and collecting dust TI does, only more. A lot more and in color already.

Dedicated calculators are pointless and graphing calculators are even more useless anymore since anyone who actually would have a real need for one more than likely has a superior alternative.

nspire is still far better

[Ambassador Kosh]

I have really loved the nspire CX CAS for my engineering classes. It looks like this new ti-84 is just going to use the same screen which the nspire CX uses which is just a cellphone screen.

It can solve simultaneous non-linear system of equations along with ODEs, integrals, differentials etc. The most I have given it so far is a set of about 40 equations and it still handles it just fine.

Our professors have started giving us more realistic problems and they are expecting more realistic solutions and things like this calculator have really helped. What I like is that it means I just concentrate on setting up all my equations and boundary conditions. Once I have more independent equations than I do unknowns the problem is a plug and chug problem and there is no reason to do that by hand when a calculator will do it more accurately and without errors.

For classes like heat transfer, fluid mechanics and thermo dynamics these higher calculators really help. The people with ti-84s are having a much harder time.

Why the heck do your course require a calculator ?

[aepervius]

Not so long ago I went thru algebra at a pretty advanced level, and we never needed a calculator. Solution to equation we could draw ourselves. So why do you even need a calculator in algebra ? That is the worst palce to have it make for lazy student. You need a calculator in classes like physic, or chemistry, but algebra you shoudl not have to.

You can take my HP-67

[stox]

from my cold dead hands. Almost 40 years old, and it still works great.

Re:Why the heck do your course require a calculato

[jittles]

You can't do calculations using Avogadro's number in your head? Wow you definitely don't belong in chemistry. ;-)

More details

[KermMartian]

Since i posted this article, we discovered many things: - The TI-84+CSE will have a z80 processor, same as the TI-82, TI-83, and TI-83+/84+ - It will have an Nspire-esque rechargeable battery - It will have a TI-84+/SE-compatible OS, so the same math books and lessons will work with it.

Re:More details

[jonwil]

Are they going to use stronger crypto on this one?

Re:More details

[KermMartian]

That we don't know yet, but we strongly suspect they will. Unless things go terribly wrong, though, they won't be locking it down the way they locked down the Nspire.

droid48 or m48, depending on which phone you have

[EmagGeek]

Done and done.

Of course, you may need to lobby your school board to get out of bed with TI, and use calculator-agnostic text books, and that is sometimes easier said than done.

What's the alternative?

[Sycraft-fu]

TI is also popular because they seem to be the only company actually making higher end calculators. While in school is a major place you want those, there are uses out in the real world too.

I have a TI nSpire CX that I got because I kept finding myself needing a calculator aside from my computer, and I wanted something that could do more advanced math, should I need or want it, rather than just a basic one. So it sits on my desk for when it is needed.

I've found nothing that is near as good overall. While there are android calculator apps, all of them seem to be pretty basic. Handycalc is the best I've found but it isn't wonderful. Worse is the problem of interface. Not only are physical keypads nicer in general (I can enter numbers without looking on physical ten-keys) but because of the limited screen space, all the android ones are a pain to operate. Trying to find any functions seems like hunting around in oldschool adventure games, where you are deciphering a foreign logic.

It's not a huge market or anything, but it is there. Aside from education there are people who have a reason to want a calculator, and TI is one of the few high end ones. If you want something with CAS, TI has it and little else does that isn't on a computer. Is it as good as Matlab? Surely not but it is easier to use and I don't have to pull out my laptop for it.

Re:What's the alternative?

[PhamNguyen]

The alternative is for school boards to set the limit of what can be used *lower*, i.e. only allow really basic calculators that are very cheap. There is no need to have a graphic/programmable calculator during a test, as long as other student's also don't have one.

By convincing school boards to set the allowable limit of how complex a calculator was allowed in a test, so that their calculators were the best allowable ones (I'm assuming GP poster was correct in stating this), TI have created a captive audience.

If all students were forced to use calculators with no programmability/graphing, then students would all get the best one of these, which would be significantly cheaper.

The other uses you gave are valid, but that's not what GP was talking about.

Re:What's the alternative?

[Sycraft-fu]

Thing is, more powerful calculators actually do make it easier to advance in math quicker. The reason is you discover advanced math has a lot of repetitive bullshit. While it is important to learn how to do that stuff, once you know it, there is little point to repeating it over and over and over.

Also in the real world, you discover that you do not try to solve problems in an artificial vacuum where you have minimal access to tools, you have an enriched toolset.

The best math class I ever had allowed for any calculator you wished, was open note, open book, and open teacher. You could go up and ask the teacher for info on a test. He wouldn't give you the answer, but he'd help set you on the right path. My pre-calc knowledge was solid after that class, I positively rocked the intro test in calc (it was a precalc test to make sure our skills were sufficient for the class) to the point the teacher asked me where I'd learned precalc.

It is harder on the teacher to design a good course without artificial restrictions, but it'll lead to better education for the students. When someone says "Oh that calculator is too powerful, " what they are really saying is "I can't think of a way to accurately teach and test your knowledge."

I find it even more funny because the only fields where you really do need advanced math, engineering mostly, the first thing you do is get introduced to things like Matlab because you haven't the time to fuck around with easier things. You really don't find cases where it is important to be able to do algebra or trig using nothing but a 4 function calculator.

Re:What's the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canada no one used them. Just in the States. HP made supperior calculators and a lot of Canadians use Casio but not all the graphical kinds.

If what you consider to be powerful calculator is an 8088 with 16k of ram for over $100 then more power to you. In this day and age college students are better with a scientific calculator and using mathmatica or maple or sometimes excel. No engineers walk with graphing calculators anymore. It is all computer and a few scientific calculators if that.

$130 for something that has not changed since 1983 is rediculous.

Re:What's the alternative?

[PhamNguyen]

Thing is, more powerful calculators actually do make it easier to advance in math quicker. The reason is you discover advanced math has a lot of repetitive bullshit. While it is important to learn how to do that stuff, once you know it, there is little point to repeating it over and over and over.

Also in the real world, you discover that you do not try to solve problems in an artificial vacuum where you have minimal access to tools, you have an enriched toolset.

So the questions shouldn't be written in a way that requires repeating things over and over, but rather involve subtle changes that require reviewing the underlying logic. On using the right tools, I agree but I was talking about high school level math, not college math. I studied pure math in college so I never used a calculator, but I accept that they would be appropriate for engineering courses, just like learning to use the appropriate software is essential.

It is harder on the teacher to design a good course without artificial restrictions, but it'll lead to better education for the students. When someone says "Oh that calculator is too powerful, " what they are really saying is "I can't think of a way to accurately teach and test your knowledge."

I find it even more funny because the only fields where you really do need advanced math, engineering mostly, the first thing you do is get introduced to things like Matlab because you haven't the time to fuck around with easier things. You really don't find cases where it is important to be able to do algebra or trig using nothing but a 4 function calculator.

The point of restricting the use of calculators is to reduce the cost burden on students. And I was referring to scientific calculators with no graphics or programming, not 4 function calculators. But I would add (as a poster below noted) that not only did I never use a calculator in college, but I also never used a programmable calculator in high school (in Australia). A graphing calculator might have been useful in some tests, and maybe some students used them, but I think that forcing students to make graphs without them is actually useful (of course this shouldn't be a big part of assessment).

Please point me to said app

[Sycraft-fu]

No seriously, I'd be interested. I'm not a student, so I have no restrictions on what calculator I can use for whatever I like. I have an nSpire because I find nothing else comes close.

Can you find me an Android (since that's what my phone runs) calculator app that is easy to use, can do exact and approximate solving, has a CAS setup (meaning can solve algebraic and linear equations), and has at least reasonable graphing? Because I haven't been able to.

And please don't go and point to the Matlab app. Everyone who doesn't know what they are talking about does a quick search, finds that, and says "Oh it's Matlab it must be good!" It isn't an actual calculator, it is just a remote interface for Matlab, you have to have a computer somewhere running Matlab for it to talk to.

This is why TI keeps selling calculators. They make ones that do the job well, and they also have nice physical keyboards.

Also, with regards to education (where they are used a lot), I don't know that you'd want people using a smartphone. Having a device that by definition has built in instant messaging and Internet makes cheating rather easy.

Re:Please point me to said app

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried MathStudio?

Re:Please point me to said app

[no bloody nickname]

You can find emulators for the TI line from TI 82 all the way to the TI 89 on the regular google play market.

Re:Please point me to said app

[Sycraft-fu]

Or I could use my actual nSpire. If the best suggestion is "emulate a TI" then that is rather an argument to the usefulness of TI calculators. The argument from some seems to be "Oh a phone can do it so much better!" Ok, well then let's see better.

For what it's worth...

[pongo000]

...I took my Comp Sci students on a tour of TI's DMOS6 fab in Richardson, TX last year. (Rather fascinating, BTW, largest completely automated fab in the world at the time, since replaced by a bigger TI fab!). At any rate, our tour guide (an engineering type) told us TI got out of the calculator business years ago. The only thing a TI calculator shares with TI the company is the name stamped on the case and a couple TI chips inside. They are designed and built by non-TI companies.

WTF

[Pope Raymond Lama]

I think the best comparison for these calculators is this: http://xkcd.com/768/

Or one could instead grab any android phone, install an app with a Python interpreter and have something to match the matlabs and mathematicas of the desktop (for only the cost of the hardware, not having to fork thousands of $$ in software license).

Graphing calculators are useless

[Anonymous Coward]

It's faster to just use a pencil and paper to sketch out the plot or just visualize the graph in your head. Graphing calculators are a gimmick. I love my HP48, but I never use it to graph anything.

Re:Why the heck do your course require a calculato

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't do calculations using Avogadro's number in your head? Wow you definitely don't belong in chemistry. ;-)

1. If you can't use Avagadro's number (or any number) in a calculation to 3 significant figures without a graphing calculator, you're right, you don't belong in university.

2. This is math, not chemistry so its easy to test ability without worrying about carrying lots of decimal places anyway.

3. From what I can tell, the OP is teaching university/college math. Other than business math or some math for non majors type course, I have no idea what the students would be doing with calculators. I did an engineering degree and we didn't use calculators for any of our math courses. A calculator does nothing for you in any of the higher maths, and it is a pretty poor test which distracts from assessing your math abilities by making you do trivial calculator work. The more I think about it, the more baffled I am about the original post. I think it must be business math.

Really, Slashdot

[aliquis]

I had the TI-85.

You insensitive clod!

Save The Whales :)

[Anonymous Coward]

And how long until we get an option to Save The Whales :) ?

Re:Why the heck do your course require a calculato

[Ambassador Kosh]

I know it is handy as hell for my chemical engineering classes. Our professors believe we should be solving more realistic problems on exams so the exams are open books, notes, previous exams, homework, calculators etc just not anything that is wifi/cellular.

In my last heat exam one of the problem ended up with about 10 simultaneous non-linear equations and one of them was a second order ODE. Once you solve the problem to the point where you have equations, knowns and unknowns without independent equations to cover the unknowns that problem is mostly considered solved. That gives about 80-95% of the credit but if you have a more advanced calculator you can more easily do the last bit and get another few points.

Exam averages tend to be around 50%-60% or so before any curves so the exams are extremely hard. I know for many degrees things like these are not needed or even should be used. It is pretty much only when you have moved beyond all the basic math stuff and you are at the point where you are using the math as a tool to solve some other type of problem entirely that you want a calculator that can handle this stuff. More and more of the students in my classes are picking up the Nspire CX CAS just for that reason. It even handles some things that are a pain to do in matlab or excel.

TI-89 rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was still in the university, I decided to buy one (actually I didn't have any money so I decided to ask my parents) and it was the sensation and the jealousy of the rest of the class. It ensured me a perfect grade in an exam were the hardest task was to find the system of equations and the last part to solve it. It was specially grate to make some programming of typical functions that I needed.

At the end of the semester, nearly half the class had a TI-89 Titanium (and one rich guy the Voyage!) and I was the only idiot with an old normal TI-89. Finally, I still love my TI-89: it looks pretty normal, not so fancy in colors, remaining the design of a normal calculator. I would definitely buy it again if I would go to university

Re:TI-89 rules!

[jfdavis668]

I also loved the original TI-89, but it wasn't specially grate. It may have been especially great.

Why so much hate for TI?

[pointyhat]

Some points which need to be made: The 83/84 platform does fine for education, which is what it's there for. It's not like it suddenly becomes useless one day because the world of maths has changed so drastically. The only reason it is used is that educators have invested a lot of time in the platform which is illogical to waste. Also, if you know your crap, you will know that there is a higher end machine (the n-spire cas) which does everything any other high end device would. I own two as they are so damn useful. They have 200Mhz ARM CPUs in them and literally run rings around everything else and are fully symbolic with unit awareness and programming capability in basic and Lua. Also if you buy a new calc, you're an idiot. The second hand price is low.

emulation is not the same

[backwardMechanic]

It's fast. Not the calculation speed (it's horrible on my old calc), but the speed of typing stuff in. I have an old TI-60 that I've been using since school, and I use it daily. I can hammer out numbers quickly with one hand, while holding a 'scope probe, soldering iron, or whatever with the other. I have a calculator app on my phone (RealCalc) - it's handy when I'm not near a real calculator. But in the time it's taken you to start your calculator emulator, I've been around three or four iterations of capacitance/inductance/resonant frequency calculations.

Casio fx 7000

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh
Right now mine is at my right elbow and currently in use :-)
You have just made me realise, I bought it 22 years ago.

Re:Casio fx 7000

[fruity_pebbles]

I still have my Casio FX-7000G in my desk drawer. IIRC I bought it around 1987 to replace my beloved TI-58C. I didn't find the graphing very useful, but other than that it was a fine scientific calculator. Eventually it got relegated to the desk drawer and replaced with an HP-32SII.

Small version available?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a place in my heart for these tiny low end computers.
But I don't like the form factor and the price! Is there something that has the same type of hardware, is smaller (maybe the size of a keychain), has just three buttons, but can be programmed like a calculator?

Basically a tiny hacker toy without the insane pricing and bulkiness of these calculators...

Meh, who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pry my HP-48GX out of my cold, dead, hands.

a better question

[Anonymous Coward]

why are people still buying calculators?

Re:Why the heck do your course require a calculato

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the US high school trig texts I've seen use it for graphing trig functions (which they also show right there on the page).

I'm fairly proficient at math and was able to go through single variable calculus, a year of calc based physics, linear algebra, 1 quarter of chem, 1 quarter of calc based stats, and the rest of my undergrad career as a CS major + Math minor with the equivalent of a TI30xa (~$10 scientific calculator). I'm slightly jaded against anyone who says they NEED a graphing calculator to teach lower level math. That doesn't mean they aren't useful tools that have a place in the classroom.

I do see the usefulness for engineers and my sister got a lot of use out of one for a quarter of non-calc stats. She mainly used it for the built in functions and not for anything to do with graphing.

Also, most tests I've seen that allow graphing calculators are designed so there's not much of an advantage over a scientific calculator.