83+ silver edition.... Hmmm. Why does a calculator of this sort need a 15 Mhz processor? I can understand why an 89 or 92 might need one, but and 83?!

And who on God's green earth is going to use 1.5MB of storage space?! That would take Microsoft's style of programming to fill!

Let's be serious, folks. The 86 is waaaaay out of date (no offense), and could seriously use an update. The 83+ is fine the way it is, and the 89 and 92 serve their purpose very well. If TI wants to waste their time, they should waste it doing more constructive things -- like making an 89 OS that solves all of our problems, or making a new cover color, turquoise, for example. How about not being late on all of the things they are promising today but won't accomplish until 2002 on their current schedule?

As for me... I don't think I will pick up this calculator. I have a Handspring Visor, and it has served me well, graphing calculator App and all!

Basically, this calc is a gimmick to get people to buy a new calculator that they don't need, as the only differences are the larger flash rom and the faster processor (other than the purely-for-eye-candy translucent case). I personally think that there should be an 86+ before TI even considers updating their newest calc. I don't even see how it would be possible to fill 1.5MB of flash rom on any of the z80-based calcs, although the 89 is a different story...
</rant>

I think this, as of all of the calculators in the 82-83 series, was made for beginners, and if I was just getting into this, I probably would buy an 83++. And the 86 isn't outdated--it still has all the functionality it needs--but it could use an upgrade, unlike the 486 I'm using right now, which should be sent to the computer equivalent of a junkyard for scrapping.

sweet!!!

Nick, MHz should NEVER be used as a comparison of speed across different architectures! Comparing a 15 MHz z80 to a 10 MHz 68k isn't a fair comparison at all -- and I'd take the "slower" 68k were I to have a choice.

Heck, you shouldn't even use MHz as a comparison of x86 chips with different cores -- we should really measure speed in Specs or based on some other form of benchmark; otherwise, we're deceived by Celeron 800's that run slower than Duron 600's, or the differences between P3 and P4's.

(For those who haven't been following the benchmarks, most current applications run faster on even 900 MHz P3's than 1.5 MHz P4's. However, if an application is properly optimized for the P4, it can run as much as 10 times faster, depending on what the application is designed to do.)

Also keep in mind that HW2 models of the 89 and 92+ use 12 MHz chips (as opposed to the 10 MHz chips of their HW1 brethren).

HW1 and HW2 have the same 12MHz chip. It was just down-clocked to 10.5 MHz in HW1

so you have cracked the custom chip of the HW1 open and compared the silicon chip inside with a the standard in a HW2? :)
HW1 uses a custom chip with a lot built in
HW2 uses a standard low power 68000 and has the stuff in an extra chip.
So it is not the same chip from an external view.
by the way, both of them works just nice in 20-25MHz, but the memory will fail at about 16MHz on a HW1. HW2 I don't know.

I think you mean 1.5 _GHz_ Pentium 4's.

Yeah, 1.5 MHZ will be just pathetic. MODERNIZE, man!! You're living in the 1970's!!!

OK- TI, while this is a great idea for a mid-range calculator (before I get flamed, "mid-range" is defined as between an 83 and an 86 in functionality, i.e. the 83+, 85, 86, and I think the 92, but I am not sure), the 89 and 86 could make better use of the faster processor and bigger memory than the 83+ can.

For example, calculus functions take time to run. Why can't the faster processor be tasked to this instead of algebra? The 86 is sorely in need of an upgrade, and the 89 could only get better with the faster processor and larger memory.

Also, considering many posters on this site seem to be at the very least good with their hands, why can't TI release silver cases like this for all the newer models- basically everything from the newer 82 onwards. I would buy it just to avoid the awful smearing my 89's case does around the screen.

In short, leave the 83+ alone. I own one, and it is just fine as a useful, but not too powerful, high school calculator. Put the calculating power in the hands of the college students who need it most.

Knight/Rocket's 2c.

FYI, it appears that the Silver Edition will also come with a GraphLink included with the calc (which makes sense, considering they're trying to sell it as a flash app-centric device).

Well, you can't buy it without the graphlink, which is one reason I'm not getting one.

What is with them and the 82 series? Why would anyone need that kind of memory capacity on a 83+. Why not make a super silver 89/92+. Also why not make an 86 flash calc?

If you ask me, I think the 83+ would be better off if some of that 1.5 MB of archive space was converted to RAM. 24K still seems pretty small.

I agree. They should bump up the RAM up to at least 50k. At the maximum 200k. So... 100k of RAM would be nice, especially when we don't have to "Garbage Collect" so much.

It does have a 128k RAM chip, but uses only 24k for compatibility with the TI-83+. I think I saw this on TI's site, but I can't find it now.

The most ram that the z80 can access at a time is 64K. This memory is split into 4 pages, each 16K. The first page (0000-3FFF) contains things that the TI OS uses often, and never changes. The second page (4000-7FFF) is used to load pages from the Flash Rom usually for romcalls and flash apps. The last two pages (8000-FFFF) are where TI stores the Variable Allocation Table and variables that are located in RAM. TI uses about 8K of this, which leaves us with 24K. If TI wanted to give us more RAM, they would have to either change the TI OS or use RAM pages like the 86, both of which would make it incompatible with the "old" 83+ (if the 83+ is old , my 83 must be ancient).

For those of you who are asking such questions such as "Why is TI improving the 83(+) family? Why not the 'better' calcs?"

The answer is simple. Where does TI get *most* of it's school-type, and student related calculator purchases? That's right! In the 83(+) line of calcs. Therefore, they are going to add to this and try to get the kids that are buying calcs for school to get the more expensive, 'better' calc.

-Doug

Yeah, something like 'Go play your games kiddies!'

that is true, but if you think about it, now there are 4 Calculators based on the Ti-82 Vs 2 based on The Ti-86 and 2 Based on the Ti-92. so thats why there's more 82 based calcs then the two other bases.

Keep in mind also that The Ti-89 sold like crazy as their higher end calculator, and that its due for a flash update soon. Although in theory they could Easily expand the Ti92 and Ti-92+

Wow. I bet this is gonna be the one everyone steals. I wish TI would put some sorta Software lock, so that only the owners could use the calculators. Then it would make stealing a much less attractive.

First you've got regular calculators, then silver. People are gonna wanna steal these babies!