Paying tribute to the amazing efforts of ti89 and ti84 communities

[Chris Dreher]

I owned a TI-81 back in the day, as did my entire advanced math classes in high school. It was a terrible device.

It had no way to exchange data or backup programs. To get software in, you HAD to type it in. To backup software, you had to manually write it down on paper.

Worse was the poorly designed battery panel. It was made out of a softer, flexible plastic that was prone to popping off if dropped. If the calculator was turned on when this happened, the memory was wiped (so back to painstakingly re-entering your handwritten code from paper... again). When someone knocked theirs off their desk onto the linoleum floor, odds were 1/3 that escaped batteries were rolling on the floor. You could hear other folks groan with empathy since it had happened to them, too.

I never used a TI calculator after that but my understanding is that these issues were solved in later models. I purchased an HP-48SX and cards with my paper route money and never looked back.