Interestingly enough, they do send out pre-production models, but overwhelmingly to teachers, not the students who will be the vast majority of their consumer base, nor the enthusiasts who bring extracurricular interest for TI's devices. That's changed slightly with the recent TI-Nspire CX and TI-84fr Pocket, both of which I believe were sent in prototype form to TI-Bank.fr members. Dingus, Brandon Wilson has been keeping us abreast of all the developments with the Pocket and with Boot Code 1.03.

I think your school made a wise decision. After 5 years of development the nspire series should be the easiest to use, most powerful, and least expensive calculator on the planet. Actually quite the opposite is true.

I would love a ti-84 pocket, simply because it looks so awesome.

However, I would way rather have an [url=bobsgame.com]nD[/url] C++ SDL sdk by default? Sign me up! They said they're also trying for a SoC with OpenGL ES support, too!

And its supposed to be $20

Hook me up with some math for one of those, and I could live with the lack of keys for the low, low price.

That's an unrealistic price-point, even for selling at cost, in my opinion. The BoM might work out to be $10-$20, but with assembly and testing, it's going to be more than that, for a relatively small product run.

Well, I'd still be happy if they sold them for $40 each, myself. I think the idea is that they will be selling far more than a small batch's worth, simply because of the low cost. Realistic? Maybe not. Awesome if it works out? Very much so-I'm planning on buying at least 2 if they ever sell them. I know they already have working prototypes.

Indeed, that's what they say. With the falling costs of dev hardware and components, even in very small quantities, I'll be unsurprised to see more and more indie hardware come out, be it game devices, smartphones, or even calculators (hint Red Edition hint).

(Would Kerm be currently working on a new calculator? )

Holy seizure-inducing emoticon, Batman! Just tossing around a few ideas, and trying to convince certain advisers that a hardware project is both novel and worth investing in. No promises.

Very cool, I can't imagine what a UC:RE would be like with adequate funding.

Less than the $80 price tag for 83+s?

Edit: One word: Kickstarter. If you have a big enough market. Just make it so everyone investing gets a calc, so you're basically doing preorders, and are guaranteed not to lose any money even if there are no more sales after the first batch.

Where are you getting $80 from? Even on sale that pathetic amount of CPU, RAM, and Flash sets you back a cool $95 or so from US office supply stores, or closer to $120 when not on sale. But yeah, presumably a much better device could be much cheaper, especially if it required far less OS development.

Eh, I think staples had a sale or something, but I think we got my bro an 83+ for $80. I don't remember that well.

But yeah, there could be better, or heck, even if it was just as crappy, I could live with that for half the price.

For sure. In fact, I can't tell you how many of my TI-83+ calculators were purchased as "broken" because of LCD ribbon cable degradation for $5 to $10 on eBay, then repaired with a sub-one-hour process to full working status.

yeah. I tried that with my 86, but it didn't work . Happily, though, it still runs as good as it did before I attempted.

It really tells the value of these calcs to see them for that cheap.

Imagine....an nD based cluster supercomputer If they really sold for $10-20, that is

I noticed that Amazon.com has new ti-83's for $82.20 with free shipping. That is quite close to the $80 you mention.

Edit: Perhaps I just found what you were quoting. www.walmart.com has the TI-83 plus for $80.00 with free shipping. I don't know if that is the store price also but it usually is.

Post merge by comic; do your best to edit consecutive posts within 24 hours.

Look at the Nspire prices where I live!!

http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_class.asp?CatIds=67,111&name=CA%5FCL%5FGraphing+Calculators

(Note: They sell the Prizm for $149.99, for comparison)

200$, wow? Staples asked me for a Canada ZIP Code, so I used "K8N 5W6" from a Wikipedia article. Are those prices do to Import Tax or do you not know?

At work, we have the TI-84+SE on sale for 99$ for the week, not sure about the CX CAS, but we do have that 149.99 regularly priced. The Prizm is 139.99 I believe, but we have it on sale for 99.99$ until the end of July.

Hmm, this nspire lua language looks interesting and already there are a bunch of programs for. Would it be worth it for me to learn it? I don't even use my nspire anymore and would like to do a bit more >.>

To be clear, it's $199.99 without taxes. With taxes over where I live, the CX CAX is $229. The CAS Touchpad model is the exact same price.

On a cooler note, however, the two nearby Staples retail stores had Casio PRIZM models ($149.99 without taxes), but did not have any TI-Nspire in stock. But last year they did the same too anyway (when Touchpad models came out)