If you could only have a single physical calculator for the rest of your life, what are you grabbin'

(you must give a reason)

Edit: imagine that you have a drawer that contains every model of calculator ever made. The drawer is on a ship and the ship is sinking. You only have room to grab one.

I think I'd probably pick a NumWorks N0110 with Upsilon (I'm pretty sure the newer ones don't work with it?), since it's probably the physical calculator I use the most often. I love my TI-84+ CE, but I mostly use it for programming, and since a lot of my projects are written in C and assembly I mostly use CEmu for testing anyway. But I'm not 100% sure, I'll have to keep thinking about this.

If emulatora didn't count towards the total, it would be my TI-Nspire Touchpad. I can use it in the TI-84 Plus mode (which isn't perfect), or I can use the standard Nspire mode for the speed. I could then use a program like Graph 89 or TIEmu to emulate the 68k series.

If emulators counted towards the total, then I wouldn't have an answer at this moment. I think the TI-84 Plus SE emulator built-in to the TI-Nspire Touchpad doesn't count as a separate calculator anyway because it isn't a great emulation.

HP Prime G2. Because its built-in programming languages are kinda fast and versatile (someone made a 3D grapher with translucency before HP themselves added 3D graphing to the firmware). It's even powerful enough to watch videos without ASM or C help but no video converter publicly exists for the HP Prime yet. Also the 256 MB of RAM helps a lot.

I would use a ti-84 plus ce, that might change when I buy a zero. It is great for programming and their is a lot of cool games and projects for it. I also use cemu for testing my code. But lately with testing tinet I've needed a physical calculator. Overall it's well built and is decent enough for me. After a few years of using ces I think it's a good all around calculator.

My answer is the TI-83+SE. Simple; reliable. Does basically everything I'd want it to do in a convenient package. Plus it's just cool looking.

Personally, I'd go with a TI‑83 Premium CE Edition Python. I definitely prefer the programming situation on CE to the 84+ these days, and I'll take a french keypad in exchange for an exact math engine.

I'd prefer an 89 titanium with a backlight, but unfortunately no such thing exists...

I'd definitely take my ti nspire cx cas touchpad. I dont use any calculator emulators on it, but it has the best games through the gba emulator and it has a superior cas to my 89T and to my non existent cas on my 84 ce and my 84 se. It also has the best graphics of any of my calculators. And it has a slightly better community base then the hp prime or ti 89T.

Me with one calculator... TI-84+ Monochrome

Whichever one I can sell for the most--everything else I can emulate as needed

This is the correct answer. 15MHz CPU, plenty of Flash, overclockable, translucent case, great for hacking.

And no USB sadly

Who needs USB if you have an I/O port you can bitbang to do anything?

I respect that y'all really like the 83 se and I get that you have more room to do more hardware hacks, but other than that, how is it any better than the 84 se?

I'd say just the cool translucent case, very late 90s/early 00s (c.f. the awesome translucent Gameboys of the same era). It's true that the TI-84 Plus SE does have the USB port going for it, but my gut answer remains the TI-83+SE.

I would pick a TI-89 Pocket CE TI-89 Titanium. If allowed by the stipulations, modified to have 4 MiB RAM (the OS supports up to 6 MiB, but eew, not a power of 2) & either another 4 MiB RAM at $C00000 (not supported but to use as a backup...but maybe that does not count because the OS does not support it, so TI would never have sold it that way) or else 8 MiB flash (supported by the OS), & also [REDACTED] (...definitely not supported by the OS).

But of course if a TI-89 Pocket CE would count as a valid choice, then that...specified to be the size of a TI-80 & have an MC68SEC000 (same as TI-89 Titanium), 4 MiB RAM, 8 MiB flash, the snooping-based graphics implementation like the current ASIC has (for support for monochrome programs) plus direct-mapped VRAM like the CE (after the end of the main RAM, again like the CE), USB C, & still also a DBUS port.

I'm tempted to say the vanilla TI-83, it's the first one I got and I had a lot of fun learning how to code on it.

But in reality, I think either TI-83+SE or TI-84+SE. More or less for the same reason as why I'd pick the 83, but with the advantage of the extra storage and speed.

The lack of USB is the TI-83+ SE's only "flaw" (if you even call it that), because of the aforementioned I/O port and all the cool things you can do with it.

Im kinda with JamesV and the 83 ... Though maybe revision O with the z180 😃

But yeah I'd have to go one with flash so the 84+SE.

I am so tempted to say the 84+SE or even the 83+SE because it genuinely does look nicer and feels better to play games on. But truth be told, if I could only grab one calc? It's gonna be the Olivetti Divisumma 18



It's simply the most stylish calculator I have ever seen. And sure the rubber membrane cover might deteriorate, or the "display" is print only, but that is part of the charm.