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TI-84+C-Silver Edition: That C Stands For Color
skade88 writes "Do you remember those large TI-8X line of calculators with a BW display from when you were growing up and learning all about math? Yeah well, you can still get them because TI has yet to update or change their line of TI-8X calculators from their 96x64 display, processors designed in the 1980s with just a few kilobytes of user accessible memory. They still cost in the $100.00 to $150.00 range. That is all about to change now that the TI-8X line of calculators is 22 years old. Their new TI-84+C-Silver edition will come with a 320x240 16-bit color display, 3.5MB of flash ROM, and 21KB of RAM. Ars has a good preview of the device along with speculation on why it took so so so very long for TI to finally bring calculators up to a level of technology that could have been delivered a decade ago."Last month some photos and a few details of the new TI-84+C were leaked.
Seen the ti-84 mentioned a lot lately... The only thing I remember was I could program it, and my professor let me for my Calculus 1 class. I still don't know a lot about Calculus, but I know more about programming... Makes me think if calculators are good for learning the subject, or for learning how to program the subject.
A couple years ago I bought an LG Thrive on a prepaid plan - so undiscounted - for about $150 I believe. The phone was not great, but it had 256 megs of useable RAM, a 320x480 color screen, and a 600MHz processor... not to mention the hardware one expects from any smartphone (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, low-end camera).
So how can TI get away with charging almost that much today for a single-purpose device that doesn't even compare favorably with a low-end smartphone from two years ago? Does it serve as an espresso machine too, or maybe as an electric razor?
#DeleteChrome
I was teaching when the original TI-83 came out - the earlier 81 and 85 came out while I was in college. At the university I taught at, we actually required students to have a graphing calculator for certain classes.
At the college level. it isn't hard for a good teacher (or textbook) to ask questions that actually test the student and not the calculator - at least, unless they have one of those algebraic calculators. Even then, things like word problems require them to identify the right formula and set it up properly (which is more important than actually being able to grind out the numerical answer from there).
Having said that, I'm not sure how some elementary school teacher is supposed to teach fractions when even fairly basic calculators can handle fractions these days (some even displaying the result as you'd write it on paper). Require students to have a specific level of calculator for each grade? I'm sure that would go over really well with parents ...
Of course, I already have one of the Casio CG-10 calculators.
This is exactly right. The reason the TI-8x line has been around unchanged for so long is because school systems find it sufficient, but not too much, and teachers know exactly how to reset its memory. If you let kids start using whatever software they want on their smartphones, cheating would become much more widespread than it is now. When I was in high school, I used a HP 48S (still do from time to time) and I could have cheated my pants off with that if I wanted to, as the teachers didn't have a clue about it. (I didn't, but easily could have--more important to have things like Ant in my RAM!)