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Ti-84 Evo

education.ti.com

111–120 of 503 posts

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#111

Ti really needs to stop with the artificial product differentiation. There's no reason 15 years after the Nspire CX CAS came out that everyone of their calculators can't do CAS.

Advanced calculators are in an unusual space with external constraints on it. Some of the features or differentiation they add serves the constraint of "if you don't, we won't let students use it in the classroom". When a calculator is used in a classroom, there's a concern about people using the calculator to replace the skill that's being taught. So, for instance, there's space for a calculator with no CAS, for a c…

Yeah there's not really a purpose for advanced calculators anymore (apart from the niche market of people who just enjoy using them). Calculators are basically only a thing now to make it harder to cheat on exams. If you don't have that constraint, you might as well use Wolfram or Matlab or whatever.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#113
post #42
post #38

We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).

I used mine constantly in highschool (10 years ago).

I use mine constantly in high school (now).

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can't divorce that from computing technology in general. A TI-83 used a z80 in 2000 and was priced at 1990's z80 rates, it was already gouging even back then! Now 26 years later the TI-84 uses an ez80 (or something something similar), which was introduced in 2001. TI has always gouged their captive market. It is just increasingly ridiculous when those students also have smartphones. FWIW I think these graphin…

Shrug. The SAT and ACT don't let you use an iPhone on their exams. $160 is what the market will bear. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it just is, and perhaps there's a market for a much cheaper competitor to beat TI here.

> $160 is what the market will bear.

You previously acknowledged it's a "very captive market" that you "would've expected Texas Instruments to try gouging" :) "$160 is what the very captive market will bear until the state-sanctioned gouging backfires" is a less compelling argument.

"Shrug" is kind of gross. Seems like you're being reflexively cynical.

Edit: to be clear the problem here is really local school boards being antidemocratic and unaccountable, not TI being greedy.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#116
post #38

We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).

I certainly got a lot of educational value out of mine. I managed to program a fully functional Minesweeper game on mine, using the built-in programming tools - no transferring efficient binaries via cable! But yes. 99% of what we did with them in class - when we were even allowed to use them - could have been handled by a little solar-powered calculator with basic arithmetic functions.

In my school, I was part of a group of students who hand-programmed games on TI-81 or TI-82 calculators using TI-BASIC. No cable transfers. Games included: Hangman, Missile Command, Minesweeper, and R-Type. Looking back, it was really amazingly impressive. Both what those calculators could do and how much free time we had to make them do it.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly got a lot of educational value out of mine. I managed to program a fully functional Minesweeper game on mine, using the built-in programming tools - no transferring efficient binaries via cable! But yes. 99% of what we did with them in class - when we were even allowed to use them - could have been handled by a little solar-powered calculator with basic arithmetic functions.

Programming mine in high school is how I ended up coding for the first time and led to my current career. Honestly a pretty good investment (from my parents) I'd say.

same. My first real exposure to coding was hacking Drug Wars on my brothers old ti-89 in math class.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#118
post #33

What's the "online calculator license" ? "Online calculator included (four-year subscription) •($80 value)"

My guess is that they are trying to encourage people not to use the various clones and unofficial emulators available for their calculators.

Re: Ti-84 Evo

#119

$160 at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-TI84-TI-Calculator/... Not as bad as I would've expected. Also, apparently it includes a very simple Python environment? https://education.ti.com/en/product-resources/eguides/eguide...

With a CPU 3x faster than a z80, you gotta wonder how many seconds per python instruction.
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