TI83 Plus - Can someone tell me why? Message #1 Posted by Les Wright on 29 May 2006, 7:34 p.m.
I know I am preaching to the choir here, but I would love to whinge to sympathetic audience.
I just picked up a TI83, new, at a less than half of the MSRP. I got it for my partner, who is upgrading some highschool math so she can assail a nursing statistics course that is bedevilling her. The TI83 is the required calculator--this is something one oft hears these days in high school and college math courses.
After about an hour of playing with the thing, I am shaking my head with the dismay that only an effete HP snob can truly know. The unit seems cheap and flimsy, the keys rattly without any of that comforting HP resistance to them, and the keypad and menu system are downright inscrutable. On top of all this, the presence of an ENTER key that really should be an equals key is totally disorienting. I tell you, whoever puts an ENTER key on an algebraic entry calculator should be unceremoniously shot at dawn.
I know that TI calcs are wildly popular and that they seem to have the educational market cornered--indeed, I got my HP48G a few years ago from an engineering student who had to switch to a TI to keep up in the calculus courses. I hope my partner, who can't figure out RPN, gets good use out of it, since I don't have much more time for this turkey. I am glad I got it cheap, and it seems to be fully functional, though I think I may have inadvertently deleted one or two of the pre-loaded apps in my effort to do a factory reset.
Which leads me to a request for a history lesson: why did hp get out of the advanced calc business, and why, oh why, is TI in ascendency with a comparatively inferior product?
Thank you for letting me vent. This purchase was supposed to be a partial consolation prize for overpaying on that HP42S, but its not been the most satisfying eBay karma.
Les
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