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Color-Screen TI-84 Plus Calculator Leaked

Posted by samzenpus on from the adding-old-school dept.

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."

28 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. And for all of us who prefer RPN? by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Have HP done something lately?

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    1. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

      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).

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    3. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by zubiaur · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    5. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by JonySuede · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
    6. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by Radak · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    7. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by Solandri · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    8. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by Agripa · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    9. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by swillden · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    10. Re:And for all of us who prefer RPN? by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

  2. Certified dumb for school use? by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Certified dumb for school use? by catchblue22 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
    2. Re:Certified dumb for school use? by MrEricSir · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.)

      --
      There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    3. Re:Certified dumb for school use? by andywebs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

    4. Re:Certified dumb for school use? by JonySuede · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
  3. Really, Ti by connor4312 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  4. High school by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:High school by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

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

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  5. Re:There's not an app for that!? by Bill+Dimm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. My Casio fx 82 still works by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  7. XKCD by mr100percent · · Score: 3, Funny

    Relevant XKCD

  8. What a joke! by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  9. Math Prof here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. Re:Superseded by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  11. I Love This Place by rueger · · Score: 4, Funny

    a student member of a popular graphing calculator hacking site

    yeah, that my kind of crowd!

    --
    Three Squirrels
  12. Re:HP-15c fiasco: HP doesn't want your money by arth1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  13. For what it's worth... by pongo000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...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.