Everyone is going technical on these calculators...how bout the physical aspects of these calculators. I know that Texas Instruments have made an attempt to colorize their calculator cases...but truly that is not enough. I think the whole calculator should be colored like the i-mac stuff.. its da new trend... speaking of color...maybe color would be a fine addon to the graphical portion of the calculator..i saw one of the casio calcs wit sound...how bout sound for the ti calc? that'll be tight...

well those are some of my suggestions...criticize me all you want about how bad these ideas are :-P

I'd pay money for a giant personalized neon light sign interwoven in the circuitry of my calculator.

Sure, it'd be a drain on batteries, but it would be worth it. Think about it: how may people would have the balls to steal a calculator that, when turned on, glowed in giant neon letters "PROPERTY OF NICHOLAS J. DISABATO" ?

:)

--BlueCalx

Personally, I know nothing about any of the hardware specs of any of the calculators, and don't really understand what difference some of the previously mentioned changes would make. But color... wow! That'd be awesome. But how good would the color quality be? I think it would be expensive to make a calculator with good color quality, plus it would eat batteries. I'm just wondering if GOOD color would be a possibility. Imagine an 89 or 92plus with color, the possibilities!

ClrwaterFL

well the color wouldnt' be to bad..i think if they switched to 2A batteries, and used some of the same techniques as the gameboy color that would be good.. it has relatively good color, 52 colors at one time, and for 2 batteries it has 12 hour running time... now that would increase for a calc. because you wouldn't have to do some of the things the gameboy does...like sound. i went to nintendo.com to find out what the pixel display is..but was unable to find it..maybe some one could find that.. well any ways... that might be something to look into

Sounds good..or how about a NeoGeo Color Pocket with 3-D graphing capabilities and pretty print and schtuff?

YEAH! and maybe a scanner... and a printer... and...

After appearance of USB graphlink, it will be only matter of software to realize connection of TI calcs with scaners, modems, printers, plotters, monitors, keyboards, sound devices, joysticks, floppy disks, CD ROMs ...

I doubt TI will put a usb port on a calculator; and I doubt anybody wants to pay for a usb-to-linkport converter; besides, think of that slow speed...

yeah lets set CALCULATOR standards as high as PC standard, and be shocked when a $100 calculator all of a sudden costs $1000!!! Thats a good idea guys!!

Next step: A TV implementation! Wouldn't it be cool to watch the Simpsons instaead of listing to boring math classes?

One of the advantages of TIs over, say, Gameboys, is that tech-heads can program games for them. Nintendo could make some good money off the programmers by selling a cartridge that you could upload your own programs into.

- Zacha K

Thats the thing, though. You CAN make program GB games yourself; in fact, the ametuer GB programming community is actually doing very well. You can buy cart copiers and burners, and the carts themselves, but get this: NOT from Nintendo. Nintendo ONLY sells you this stuff if they agree to liscence your games.
And believe me, programming your game, and getting all the stuff to test it on the HW is no easy task.

People change the color of an item when it isn't selling and they need profits. I-Mac, Nintendo64, Gameboy, and many others all did this. They needed money and didn't want to release an upgrade.

If you don't agree I'd like to here your explanation.

Ben

the 89/92+ both do partial fraction decomposition (use factor( I believe).

Also, your idea of a new processor is flawed. TI has only been working with the m68k for a few years now (i think 5-7 or something, I don't remember). When TI starts using the m68k more and more, the software should get better and faster. Look at the hp49g with that 4mhz saturn chip they've been using for quite awhile now; I hear it graphs 3D as fast as the 89 does (although I hear at lower grid defaults). Give TI some time.

If I've been incorrect, please feel free to flame me while I put on this flame-proof vest

I didn't necessarily mean scrap the 68k (the article was written almost as stream of consciousness...sorry) but it would be nice to be able to upgrade it to different versions of the same processor much like I can swap the K62-475 in my desktop for a K63.

The MC68K is not to blame. You can have very nice on calc realtime 3D in a blank of the eye (look to DBA's 3d engine). The Mac classic was based on a 68k, nobody complained about the speed or stuff. Mathematica could easily be run on that platform. And by the way, everybody was talking about Mathematica and its myriad of functions, but did you know that the version 2.2 of the software could be held on three standard floppies ! Doubling the Flash Mem capacity, in addition to some quality assembly programming could really make miracles, and get rid of the TIOS...and that's why great tems like DBA Doors, or such are. But talking about doubling the mem capacity, did anybody hear about RamDoubler on the Macintosh, can't a similar technology be applied on the TI-92+ hardware ???

If I remember correctly, all RAMDoubler did was tweak the allocated sizes of running programs, maybe some virtual-memory like stuff, and maybe some compression. Sorry, but this doesn't really apply to the m68k graphing calcs.

Doors is a _shell_. It still relies on the _ROM_. It's like Mac's Finder, if you want a 68k analogy.

I really wish my calculator could hold the equivalent of 3 standard floppies.

I remember reading that the 89's ROM is a couple megs. That's cool enough for me. <ramble>Speaking of ROM's, wouldn't it be interesting to write a gaming ROM? Obviously, there are many steps there (including figuring out how to write ROMS that can be used), but I think it would be fun to blatantly have a gaming machine instead of just running games on a math machine. I'm talking about reducing the ROM to only graphlink and program execution capability, or something like that. Maybe we could put Street Fighter entirely on our calc with room to spare! I realize this defeats the purpose of even calling it a calculator, but that's just a wild idea I thought would be cool.
If I had even one floppy's worth of space, that would rock because games like Commander Keen and Jetpack fit on floppies and they are awesome games. Think about how much smaller they could be without having such complex graphics, too!</ramble>

Yes.All HP calc uses the Saturn, that means HP has more experience with the Nec processor(14 years) . For the M68k, texas has only 5 years of experience. so,
14-5=9
maybe you have to wait 9 years to get a good TI calc.! But I think the TI89 is pretty good comparing to the HP49G, I mean, it's not far at all. Obviously the power of the M68k is responsible of the power of the calc..... HP49 is powerfull thanks to the ams,and if it was a TI calc.... then it would be a disaster!!The day the ti-os takes full advantage of the 68k, then it would be the best in the world.

I am certainly no expert in this field, so feel free to roast me to a crisp.
Yes, HP has 9 years more experience with their processor and/or programming than TI, but think about this: The HP4x is openly compared to the TI-89 in quality, speed etc. I don't think we will have to wait that long for a really grat calc.
As for the new features list, here are my ideas:
The TI-89 is already a great machine. Sure, it has some shortcomings, but it is their most advanced yet (allowed on the SAT). After a certain point, though, it stops being a calculator. Anyway, here are a few of my complaints:
The screen - I have an 89, and I do realize how good I have it when i compare it to freind's calcs, but it is far from perfect. I was wondering how feasible it would be to integrate Palm-Pilot like screen technology into the calcs. They would be far more readable. Even more of the Pilot's technology could be successfully integrated into the calcs. How about a hot-sync cradle? They should at least come up with a way to incorporate rechargeable batteries into their systems. And please get a more readable screen font. I have 20/20 vision and i find myself squining sometimes.
The software - TI-OS has a lot of great potential, but it ain't there yet. The catalog should be broken down into categories like it is in the Graph-Link software. They need more testing before they release it, too. The entire far-right row of pixels in the graph screen is not utilized on my calc (others?). A percent battery power left indicator would be nice. And custom menus all around, not just when you press 2nd+Home.

I gotta go, and I've ranted long enough anyway

For the catalog, you can press a letter and it will jump to the commands that starts with that letter, But if you want catalog clasification, no problem, you can use math menu, and others. Today I used a friens' HP48G, the one with 32kb of ram. And it's not bad... maybe very slow, and hard to understand what you are doing.(didn't have this problem with my TI89) . THE KEYBOARD VERY STIFF!! my god, you've never used such a hard keyboard. I liked the body, seems to be like a rock, and it doesn't have a slidecase, but my friend has a HP thing there to put the calc inside (closes with a zip).And a little advantage, it has infrared port, clock with alarm!! it's very nice to see the hour in the upper-right corner of the screen!!. But the screen is awful, 131x64... anyway the letters are big, and that's make it very readable. Contrast: TI has a better contrast, black and white(almost).While the HP is yellow and blue/black...
So, I think the TI lcd screen is good, maybe to add a bigger (optional) font would be fine. The ams , my friend, the ams. I should say the ams instead of the calc. I hope to have a good ams for my ti89 before 2001. Instead of a new calc.

I forgot to say, 3D graph is increadible fast in the HP49G, even with 14x14 grid. That's why the function is called "Fast 3D".Rotation is very fast and computation can take half the time than in a TI89.But the screen resolution is 1 reason. Saturn Architecture doesn't support higher resolution than the original 131x64(awful).M68k, supports up to 300x200 or more.

whoops, I mean expand(, not factor( :P

I was half asleep when i wrote that...