I want to buy

[wjbudd]

Hey TI, I want to buy a new cas calculator that has the new Casio color (Prizm) screen!!!! Ha, ha, ha. Like get off your az and do something significant for a change.

[wjbudd]

[Weregoose]

Go tell TI.

[wjbudd]

Already did but they are in denial.

[NETWizz]

Seems like they need a calculator with a colored screen that also supports full interpreted, compiled, and assembly programs. That is what we hope to see from TI in the near future.

There has not been much from TI since I started here almost 10 years ago. All they had was the TI-84Plus, which is a glorified TI83+ i.e. TI83++, then the Voyage 200, which is like a glorified TI-92+. It really is not smarter than the TI-89, but it has a qwerty keypad and testing organizations like the ACT are against it.

Finally, they came out with the nSpire, which teachers and students seem to be flocking too, yet it is not very good for programming or hacking. Also, its math features are not much better at all i.e. I don't care that it handles numbers bigger than 1E100 or greater decimal precision. It is still an Algebra/Trigonometry/Geometry & Pre-Calculus calculator. Only the TI-89 series and higher are Calculus aware (out of the box).

All that said, all the Z80 calculators have been reprogrammed to do all sorts of advanced math well beyond TI's wildest dreams. Surely, TI never thought people would create flash apps to hook directly into the home screen and perform calculus functions! It got to the point people went so far as to replace the TI-OS with their own the only problem is nobody ever re-built the OS to handle the mathematic functions a calculator should handle.

[wjbudd]

"Finally, they came out with the nSpire, which teachers and students seem to be flocking too, yet it is not very good for programming or hacking."

I'm not so sure that teachers and students are flocking to it. I teach and I am very under impressed with nspire. It lacks any significant math improvement over other calculators and in fact lacks a lot of math capability that other calc's have had for years. So I don't see any reason to switch and spend all that money and waste a lot of time learning how to operate another calculator which I see as different but not better. Perhaps only the weak teachers who can not teach math without a calculator are the ones who use it. My understanding is that students who have seen the Prizm like it a great deal. Among the many objections to the nspire are the following: To big. Screen hard to read. Keyboard keys don't all have the same feel. Physically seems to be 1990's technology. Programing very difficult to figure out. Entire calculator difficult to figure out how to use. Lacks math functions of previous TI calculators and lacks math functions that Classpad and Hp50g have and because of that not a good choice for college. For what you get or perhaps I should say for what you don't get, its priced to high and the documentation is not great. I think the Prizm with its color screen is preferable to the non-cas nspire and I suspect that Casio will follow up on the Prizm with a color screen for it's Classpad in which case the people who bought the nspire cas model will kick themselves for not waiting. We shall see.

[Madskillz]

In actuality, whether you see it or not the nspire was designed with teachers in mind. Almost everything added to it was designed with teachers in mind. Everything from the Press-to-Test to the crackdown on easy programming abilities. For those reasons alone teachers will flock to the device because it gives them more control in the classroom and during testing. In fact there is a google group full of teachers that sing it's praise.

[wjbudd]

Your post was very interesting.

There is a VERY BIG DIFFERENCE between "designing what teachers want" and "designing with teachers in mind." If TI sent out a letter asking what teachers want,I never got mine and in fact I know a lot of teachers, and no one that I know was ever asked what they wanted and for the teachers I know, nspire is not what they want. I don't know a single teacher that has an nspire or wants one and I gave you the reasons for that in my post above.

Press to test is a major disaster waiting for a place to happen. If someone puts your calculator in test mode and you don't have another unit or a PC with special software handy you are screwed because there is no way you can get out of test mode, and see the info that you stored in files you have on that calculator.

As for the crackdown on easy programming abilities, that makes it just as difficult for teachers to program the device as it does for any one else, and thats not of benefit to teachers, it just makes their life more difficult.

I am not sure what you mean by "some great stuff coming that way," but if you are suggesting that TI is going to make great improvements to nspire, you need to keep in mind that they have had years to do that and it has not happened yet, so dream on.

Listen real closely to what I am about to say in response to your statement: "In fact there is a google group full of teachers that sing it's praise." Actually there is a small group of people that post at that site and the same people post over and over again. Furthermore they won't allow a debate of the pros and cons of the nspire on that site (like we are having here) so all you are going to see there is a very biased point of view. Now here's the important message I want to leave with you. Some people cannot do math and teach it without a calculator crutch and there is a big difference between teaching math and teaching calculator operation. Furthermore the teachers that are "CALCULATOR DEPENDENT" are going to sing it praizes because if you take away their calculator they cannot do their job.

Now then, go plot the simple equation z=x+y on an nspire. I can do it on the HP50g, the Classpad, the TI-voyage 200 and a few other calculators, so you should be able to do it on your nspire. Right?

[Madskillz]

You mistake me for a TI sympathizer...which clearly I am not. I too have read that google group and I agree that is almost all made up of people pro nspire, who refuse to discuss the arguments against using one. Now to say that TI has taken out math functions could be true, I don't have one to try it out and I haven't bothered to look into that. But it's not the only time one of their calculators wasn't able to perform a math function do to memory issues or other circumstances. It's happened with the 83/84 series and I'm sure wont be the last time. I don't know about your area but I know teachers at my old high school wanted a calculator that could be used on all the standardized tests. They were tired of all the kids playing games in class too. Press-to-test, I agree could pose a terrible problem. But it was also a solution that TI used to allow the calc to be used on all those standardized tests. Whether it fails or not is really due to poor design/functionality. The reasoning behind it is sound. As far as I know this is the only calc, that I can remember where ti provided software for teachers. I can be wrong here, but I never remember TI offering an emu for any of their other calcs. I know my teachers always used VTI even in college. Ti tried to accommodate the 84+ users with their click-pad. I don't know how well that worked for them.

As for what I meant when I said great stuff coming that way, clearly I was referencing the users who do make programs for the nspire at least an nspire running Ndless. Again, a calculator was made for math functions and to be used in that way. The ability to run programs/games is an added bonus. To say the nspire is perfect and not flawed would be ridiculous. I think we are both in agreement about that. I agree that some teachers do like to use the calculator. You call it a crutch some may see it as a tool, and as a tool doesnt a teacher have a right to teach their students how to use this tool.

I see you praise the prizm, but you haven't really stated why you like it more except for the color screen...which I said is probably a mute point to a good majority of the students. I like the form factor of it, I like the fact that Casio has been pretty open towards the programmers out there. I like the price point...but really all of that doesn't mean anything when TI still is the company that school systems look to to provide them with calculators. Casio has pretty much always had something comparable to TI, it's just how they chose to implement their software and functionality that differed.

[Xeda112358]

Gah, debates always lead to argument.

I had a math teacher in high school who:
A] Knew what he was doing and not at all inept at mathematics.
B] Made ample use of the calculator to teach us the theory behind what we were taught.
C] Was rather excited at the release of the NSpire-- enough to show us his new emulator and its functions.
D] Taught a class of Juniors in high school Calc I, Calc II, a portion of Calc III, and a good chunk of Linear Algebra.
E] Was fully aware of the calculators programming functions and how to put it into PTT mode
F] Promoted the purpose of the Graphing Calculator:
1) As a tool to be used in Mathematics
2) To help show theory
G] Promoted the purpose of the programming capabilities.

There is a legitimate reason that these calculators can be programmed. No, it is not for games (though I am sure the programmers who worked on it knew that it could be used this way). Texas Instruments understood a fairly obvious fact: There is no way that they could include every mathematical function to suit every need and circumstance of every branch of mathematics at all levels. The algorithms would be too complex and it would be a waste of memory to include advanced functions for a calculator that mostly high school students use. THe programming functions are there for us to create the functions we need if they are not supplied. The picture variables offer a way to compare multiple graph screens. The GDB's are there to save functions for future use as well as to save settings. Lists are used to compare, store, and manipulate data.
We are who we are because we like to manipulate math. We use pictures to store images for games or math programs. We use GDB's to save user settings to restore after the games are finished. We use lists and matrices to make save data. We use math to make fun and that is not the purpose of these calculators. Math is the purpose. A study that is older than any person alive and possibly older than any person ever to have lived (but that cannot be proven).

I still think TI should make a new branch of OS designed for programming...

[NETWizz]

[wjbudd]

My understanding of google trends is that it indicates the volume of people who do a search for information on a particular term. Please correct me if I am wrong about this. If I do understand that correctly, your graph indicates that there are as many or more people interested in the older 84+ calculator than in the new nspire, and that is occuring three years after the new product was introduced. That my friend is not a good sign for nspire. While nspire may not be a total dud, for a new product it certainly lacks popularity. It lacks that thing called wow factor. It's just not going to take over the calculator market the way TI's previous products did.

Ti's strategy is clear. Snuggle up to high school math teachers and get them to use nspire. Then the teachers will require their students to buy nspires. Will that work? Not if there is a product that the students like better, and initial indications are that the better product is called the Prizm and it really hasn't hit the shelves yet.

[Xeda112358]

So does that mean the argument/debate is over? TI failed to recognise us programmers as a key component in their success and that has backfired on them. Whether or not TI-Cares, it is now their problem, right? As the graph shows, whatever their intent was, it didn't work. I imagine TI will step it up in the future. I hope so, because that will make the Nspire indirectly useful.

[AlienCC]

Personally I am not planning to buy any new TI products that are less capable than the ones I purchased in the 1990's.

From what I've seen the Ti-NSpire has better hardware capabilities, but is no better than the software sitting on top of it that is impairing it from being as great as what was already released in the late 1990's.

--AlienCC

[wjbudd]

"From what I've seen the Ti-NSpire has better hardware capabilities, but is no better than the software sitting on top of it that is impairing it from being as great as what was already released in the late 1990's."

"I imagine TI will step it up in the future. I hope so, because that will make the Nspire indirectly useful."

Having watched what TI has done from when rummors were flying that TI was working on a new product and they tested prototypes in a German school to now, I have the distinct impression that this is not the same TI that previously produced innovative and successful products. What I mean is that there have probably been some personal changes that make it like a different company. They have had 3 years now to make the major changes that could have made the nspire product popular and a big success but instead of doing that, they seem to deny that nspire is not what it should be, and they compensate with advertizing spin. It's like they feel that if they can get the right advertizing pitch, sales of the new product will take off and everyone will hail it as a hugh success. That hasn't happened and is not likely to happen. To make things worse, I am hearing that production of the 84 is going to stop presumably to force people into buying the nspire. All that will do is alienate further their customer base.

I have decided that we have seen TI's best efforts and they are not good. I was hoping for a next generation product with cell phone quality screen, keyboard, and batteries, the same easy programing, and math capabilities that would set a new standard in high end calculators. What we get instead was very disappointing and consists of less math capability, 20 year old packageing technology, and programing that only people who like to suffer can enjoy. A better product? No. A different product. Yes. So it is time to move on and I think the Prizm is an indication that Casio is now the innovator that TI once was. Yes, we need to see how that works out but there is no need to lower our standards and buy a newer calculator that would be a dissappointment. Yes, I am certain there will be a really good new design in our future that we all can get excited about but that design is not nspire nor nspire cas. Be patient. It will all work out.

[Xeda112358]

[imc]