A few days ago, we heard that a TI-Nspire CX CAS II was rumored to be released this year, and we now have confirmation. Our friends at TI-Planet linked their discussion; for clean-room principles, we've done our research here solely from primary sources. Specifically, we found that TI-Education France discusses the TI-Nspire CX II and TI-Nspire CX CAS II, and thanks to the wonder of parallel URLs, an unlinked English page about the TI-Nspire CX/CX CAS II also exists. We spot a few key features that appear to be promoted with this new calculator:
Notably, since most of the above appear to be improvements in the calculators' operating system, and the calculator's memory has not been expanded, it is not clear whether these features will also be available as an OS upgrade for the older TI-Nspire CX models.
Have you discovered anything else interesting about the new TI-Nspire CX II and TI-Nspire CX CAS II? Do you think we'll get to play with it at T^3 this year? Will we manage to get our hands on the nice red European -T version? Will the TI-84 Plus CE be refreshed as well? Let us know your thoughts in the attached thread.
- A Faster Processor: Both the English and French pages mention "faster performance", but only the French version has specifications. Unfortunately, all we can tell is that the calculator has the same amount of memory (~90MB of Flash, 64MB of RAM) as its predecessor.
- TI-Nspire BASIC Drawing Support: For the first time, it appears that you will be able to manipulate the graphscreen with the TI-Nspire's own flavor of BASIC. The BASIC variant therefore joins the Lua language for these calculators in allowing graphical programs (and perhaps games?) to be written.
- Interface Improvements: Many Cemetechians prefer the TI-Nspire over its TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus brethren; I am not one of them. In fact, I've been quite outspoken in my criticisms of the Document interface. TI appears to be working to improve this, touting "[n]ew app icons, supported by color-coded screen tabs, improve the user experience."
- Interactive Graphing Features: Animated graphs, function coefficients that can be adjusted in real time, and dynamic points defined by expressions or sliders all appear to be part of a push to make graphs more interactive and intuitive.
- CAS-Specific Features: The ability to more accurately solve differential equations and to lock out CAS functionality during tests have been added.
Notably, since most of the above appear to be improvements in the calculators' operating system, and the calculator's memory has not been expanded, it is not clear whether these features will also be available as an OS upgrade for the older TI-Nspire CX models.
Have you discovered anything else interesting about the new TI-Nspire CX II and TI-Nspire CX CAS II? Do you think we'll get to play with it at T^3 this year? Will we manage to get our hands on the nice red European -T version? Will the TI-84 Plus CE be refreshed as well? Let us know your thoughts in the attached thread.