Survey posted 2004-02-09 21:45 by Morgan.

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I thought I would end the age old debate right here, right now. What are the reasons you think the one of the above calculator is better than the other. And the all important question....WHY?? I am writing a paper my a class of mine on this very subject and I want your input! Yeah...I couldn;t come up with a better topic so... I'll be including some quotations from the replies as well as interviewing anyone who has AIM. Personal stories are very helpful!!! If you have some dire ambition to be interviewed becasue you have good experience with both of these calcs... contact me on AIM over the next week or so...maybe longer, it will depend. My AIM SN is: Morgazum85 Thanks for helping resolved this age old endless depate!

Ok so we were having some difficulties entering in [enter] into posts for a while there, thus none I had in the above post showed up...

Contact me on AIM @ Morgazum85 if you want to be interviewed for an article I am writing about this issue. Make sure you have good experience and justification for your reasons...

believe it or not I will be very subjuctive and unbiased asI can..got to keep the professionality.

ummmmm.... did you mean 'objective'?

Just remember that most people who are reading this have already voted. Don't use this as a way to convince them to vote a different way.....

I, however, have not, at 22:23 GMT+10 11-02-04, yet voted...

I'd love to compare the menu systems for each calc, but I don't have a ROM for the 86...or 84+ SE, any chance of getting one?

For the 86 that would be illegal (if you're asking for a ROM in this context, you probably don't have the actual calc), for the 84 it will (or at least, should ;) ) remain impossible to obtain it in the near future.

Perhaps it's the fact that I don't have a link cable for it...

Who is actually keeping track of who has illegall roms in the first place? I doubt if anyone actually cares as long as yo dont sell them or copy them or distribute them or edit them or anything else other than emulate them--or delete it(but youd have to have it in the first place)

--==PHIL'S COMMENTS--PART ONE==--

Well, I'll try to make this comment a bit more constructive and helpful than the last one. Here are all my opinions:

o       The TI-86 is a powerful calculator. It is good, it can do lots of math, however, it lacks a Sequential mode, which to me, isn't that much of a big deal. However, an Honors Algebra 2 student, who is a friend of mine, had a TI-86 and wanted to use the sequential graphing mode. Everybody else in the class was using a TI-83+, and they could all participate in the class instructions, but he couldn't, because, to my knowledge, you can't do that on a TI-86.
o       The TI-86's menus are awful. I know, I know, this is the center of the debate right here, but honestly, they're horrible to use. I prefer the TI-83+'s menus much more, since you can see more options on the screen at once, and it just makes more sense, logically. You can see and understand what you're doing on the screen, and to the average TI user, the TI-86 menus are not only confusing, but frustrating, as well.
o The TI-83+ has flash ROM. The TI-83+SE has even more. The TI-86 has... none. Flash ROM on the TI-86 would be nice, but it's not there. (I know I sound awfully biased toward the TI-83+... and I am, so, hope that doesn't bother anybody too much)

(cont. in next post)

Ummm...the 86 does have a sequential graphing mode. Find FORMT on the graph menu.

--==PHIL'S COMMENTS--PART TWO==--

o The TI-83+ is much more widely used and is still supported by TI. At any time, TI could make a new Flash APP program for the TI-83+SE, but since TI doesn't support the TI-86, the TI-86 is much less popularly used, and as far as mathematical deomstrations go, the TI-86 isn't used. The calculator for this is the TI-83+SE (and soon, the TI-84+SE). It's surprising, but not even the TI-89 gets this much attention. The most popular calculator is the TI-83+SE (soon to be the TI-84+SE).
o The TI-83+ may seem better in all of the above categories, but I will concede that the TI-86 has some pretty good games. The only reason I can see that you'd want a TI-86 is for the games. There is a nice collection of third-party software for the TI-86, which is, considered by some, to be better than the TI-83+SE's collection (TI-86 isn't full of BASIC junk either).
o Yes, the TI-86 has better math capabilities, but (as this is stated below), if that's your reasoning for getting the TI-86 over the TI-83+SE, then you might as well go up another step and get the TI-89 (the best calculator of all, in every aspect). :-D

So, those are my comments. I hope they are considered to be more useful than the other ones :) This also pretty much sums up the comparison/constrast from the two calcualators, from my standpoint. The TI-86 does have better math on it than the TI-83+, but IMO, if that's the only reason you're getting it, then you might as well just go for the ultimate calculator of all time- the TI-89. :)

Oh, btw, this report sounds interesting. Are you doing this for a school project? Will we get to read it? ;-)

--==end Phil's comments==--

i think the ti83+ is the most advanced because it has archive memory. this is useful bcuz things get annoying when all ur mem is cleared on a ti86

Two words, Flash ROM. Actually, that is a word and an acronym.... but nevermind. That and the menus suck. -W-

justification.....aaah! Come on you just can't say that it suck!

I voted "no opinion" because I own none of the mentioned calcs and know little about them. However, a bit about the 86 menus... a friend of mine had just opened his box that day and upon activation of the first menu his calculator immediately "screwed up." I'm not sure of the specifics but half of the menus would not show up (by that I mean the bottom half, not some menus). I thought it was funny but he had to send it back because they wouldn't help him via e-mail with how to fix it.

Come On!
83+ SE / 84+ SE VS 86 W--T--F!?
So, you want to debate a couple of +1MB ROM calcs @ 6-15Mhz against a 6MHz calc with a 96K RAM...O-K
Using the 83+ personally and a few friends, I can easily say the freeze up as much as an 86 would. Usually because of bad Assembly programs!! or GAMES! :@
If the 86 has menu problems without any prior use of assembly programs then FINE, it has some serious problems but WHY compare it to "the best highschool calcs"?

+ I'd like to add (but I don't know how =P):
...I'd sooner buy a calc able to do calculus than a beast with kickass hardware specs that does " " when it comes to calculus and ACTUAL equations. (even though you can do equations on an 83+SE after about a hundred keys)
The fact that 83+'s can't recognise the individual letters and run it as a command is a set back, eg: "s-o-l-e-(" whereas you need to go to CTLG and get "solve("

That wouldn't work on any other calculator, either. Unless of course you created a function 'sole()'

Hey- I haven't seen you here in a long time!

Haha, you're right, sole() doesn't exist :) But, for solve(), you're right, not being able to type it in stinks... but that's why I'm a TI-89 person.

Typos can hapen...
sole() sounds like a good command anyway =P

*user types "sole()" on homscreen*
*user sits back and watches the calc draw the bottom of a shoe*

Then get a TI89.

Kick-ass hardware specs AND can do calculus :)

indoubitably

WHY IS NOT THE TI89 AN OPTION?

The TI-89 is 68K-based, not Z80 based.

And there's a whole lot of calculus stuff the 86 can do that the 83 can't. It's not until programs, which take up memory, are added that the 83 can even compare with the 86 in calculus. In the meantime, the 86 can retain it's memory for other things. *cough* games *cough* The menus on the 86 are better than the ones on the 83, because you can still see what you're doing while selecting something from the menu. But if you like the enter a menu and totally cover what you're working on, possibly forget entirely if you have a bad memory, then that's your preference.

Umm, I don't see how it is bad that you cannot see what you were doing. You go into a menu to get what you need. You don't linger, see what is going down, have a little chat with the menu. You are in the menu for about a second, and that is the longest. If you need to see the screen while you are in a menu, are you sure you are in a class that warrents the advanced-ness of the 86?



-W-

Hardly...the advantage the 86 has is that you can have a manu and a working screen working at the same time.

But why would you need to???? The 86 menus are slow!
-W-

That 86 menus are not slow, what you are referring to is the first time you run an 86 program where the calc has to compile the "writeable tokens" which is another feature the 83+ lacks, thus you "have " to know your way around the calc very well to find everything or go into the catalog every time you want a comand.

I did not say the compiling was slow. The use of the menus are slow.

-W-

I know people who can use them rather speedily. (Faster than me on the 83 or 89, in fact.)

Bet I'm faster than them on a TI-89. :-D I can type VERY fast on my TI-89, even in complete darkness (I've done it before, I wrote a love note on my TI-89 once when I couldn't even see the keys).
I used to be very fast on my TI-82 (I could also type without looking), but now that I'm used to the TI-89 keys and not the TI-82 keys, I have to look when I type on the TI-82.

HOW??? Are you talking about the time it takes to display the menu or what?

No, i am talking about the face that it uses pages, and you have to cycle through the pages to get what you want. There is no pressing "6" to get the command there. This is why I cannot concieve of how the outragous claim made by Jeremi... (damn i cannot spell) can be true.

-W-

That's slow if one is unfamiliar with the 86 menu layout. My math teacher has no problems whatsoever using the 86 menu system, and often beats everyone in the class to doing something on the calculator. (Even those with different models.)

Just because you are fast at doing something, does not mean that another method is not faster. You use a faster system, you will go faster. It is like a street race. The guy with the fastest car wins. Until someone get's NOS, then the other gets blown out of the water.

And morgan says my arguments are lacking....

-W-

Well, TI's aren't cars with NOS now are they?

If someone who has never touched an 83 and myself were to race to see who could get something done faster, I'd win. I have experience with how they 83 works, the other person doesn't. In a similar fashion, if someone has experience with the 86 then they'll get stuff done faster than someone who doesn't have any experience.

Someone with 3 years expirence on an 86 will not be able to do things as fast as someone with the same amount on an 83+.

-W-

I beg to differ. The girl who sits next to me in chemistry has had an 86 for about the same length of time I've had my 83+, and she's way faster. (And I know my way around the 83.)

I just don't understand how that could be possible. I mean, with the ability to press numbers on the 83+ to go right where you want, how could pressing the "more" key many times then an "f-key" be faster?

Howeverm she could be one of those few that can type faster on a calc than most can on a keyboard, and uses the typable-tokens.

-W-

The biggest advantage, which nobody seems to have mentioned it (though knowing my luck, someone said it down the page), is that a menu token can be entered more than once repeatedly. For instance, if you want to type several cube roots at once (where entering 3rt(x) is much faster than (x)^1/3), the 86 requires one less key press for every entry [e] of 3rt(x) (where e>1) than the 83. Multiple entries of submenued tokens require even more keypresses on the 83.

Of course, this is all mostly moot because there is rarely a time when repeated tokens are neccessary.

*I doubt if "submenued" is a word, but you know what I mean.

Well, I understand what you're saying-- if you use it a lot of times in a row, it would be an advantage, but x^(1/3) works just as well for me. By the time I'd be done fumbling around with the menu on the TI-86 (even if I was speedy gonzales with it) to find it the first time, I would have typed it by then.

P.S. Dont' forget the parenthesis around (1/3) in the exponent... your answer will get messed up

Everyone keeps saying that you'd never use the same commands on a calc more than once. I have an 86, and from personal experience, it's vastly more efficient for programming than an 83. I've used both quite a bit, and I find my 86 much better. I can see all the programming commands while I'm typing, so I don't have to stop, hit PRGM, cycle through a few menus, then find the command I want. I can just hit the command, and maybe MORE once or twice, and I can still see what I was programming so I don't forget what I am doing.