Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

[Don Shepherd]

(04-20-2015 04:48 PM)Han Wrote:  

(04-20-2015 04:09 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  Rather like HP mimicking the TI-NSpire.

I own an nSpire and like it quite a bit (though more so as a tinkering toy than a calculator). I don't see how anyone could think the Prime mimicks the nSpire other than the fact that they both sport color screens and use rechargeable batteries. The nSpire has a terrible keyboard (tiny keys? whose fingers are that small?), a not-very-responsive clickpad, uses "documents" and is fairly thick. The Prime has a touchscreen, a not-so-legible keyboard (but at least the keys are big), is thin, and does not have a "document" file system.

Hi Han.

I got an NSpire when they first came out, I think in 2007, and thought it was an interesting calculator for its time. The keys are small, but I adjusted to them, even with my big fingers. It was a black-and-white screen in those days, and I never upgraded when they came out with the color screen. I did some BASIC programming on the early NSpire, and programming was severely crippled by a lack of any input or output commands, but I think they fixed that eventually. Now I understand it supports Lua, which I find interesting too but have never learned. What it really needed was a touchscreen, the clickpad is just not natural. The filing system worked fine for me.

When the Prime was announced a couple of years ago, from its description I remember thinking it was sort of an NSpire copycat. Other than a touchscreen and color, I didn't see much difference except, of course, the NSpire worked. From all the Prime bug reports, it seemed that not much testing went on before it was released, and I'm not surprized. Developers don't do significant testing on new products like they did when I was a programmer, they leave it to beta testers to find the bugs, and that is probably not a wise idea. Programmers need to take responsibility for their product.

I found the Casio Prizm interesting too. I had a unit that teachers could use for a few months, so I played with it but returned it eventually.

What I really like is the "old HP iron," the 65, 17b, 12c, those are built to last a lifetime.