I arrive home with the brand new calculator and of course have my own private scream-and-jump-like-a-little-girl-since-no-one's-looking moment! At that point I tear open the packing and take a look at my new toy in absolute awe...such a pleasing blue form factor dominated by a huge screen and intricate TI-84 Plus buttons just begging to be pressed! Within moments I dive headfirst in getting to know this TI-Nspire and hear nothing else around me. Even though all is going well I suddenly begin to feel unsatisfied by its bulkiness and the fact that there is another keypad I have to lug around in my school bag...and then the guilt comes in from having spent so much money on this thing. I make the decision to return the TI-Nspire to Office Max and go for the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, the one that my instuctor suggested. Unfortunately Office Max is sold out of this model and I choose to take a refund and go somewhere else.
I eventually get the TI-84 Plus SE from Best Buy and take it home in a constant state of euphoria as I happily travel the roadways with my trusty VW Jetta. Once I get the package open I dive headfirst into knowing this calculator just as I previously did with the TI-Nspire. No matter how hard I try to like the features and the looks, my fickle nature once again gets the best of me. All of a sudden I am actually turned off by the toylike appearance of the colorful plastic buttons, and the overall look of the device doesn't seem to fit me as an individual. Another concern that arises is whether this particular model will be enough to get me through the upcoming advanced courses in my schedule...primarily Calculus. After contacting Texas Intruments directly and being told that this model is not recommended for Calculus or anything beyond, my suspicions are verified. This model may be the best of the best for high school and university students, but I am certainly not impressed. I make the choice to take this back as well.
All I know is that there is an advanced version called the TI-89 Titanium, but it only reflects the same toylike appearance of the TI-84 Plus SE. I then go online to do some comparison shopping via Amazon website and see that there is a competitor from Hewlett-Packard called the HP 50g. After reading up on its features I am once again intrigued and look into it even further. It turns out that there seems to be a rivalry between the HP 50g and TI-89 Titanium, but out of all the online debates there is one notion that stands out to me: Texas Instruments is understood to be the school standard while the Hewlett-Packard tends to be popular with the working class amongst practicing engineers. In addition to amazing features like a SD card slot, Infared, USB connectivity and enabled Reverse Polish Notation there is also an appearance that seems more mature and appealing to me. I take this HP 50g off the shelf and find the quickest route to the customer service desk for an exchange.
So far my time with this HP is going very well and I am excited to have something that can last with me through my time at ECPI as the math courses get more challenging.
TRENT
Sent from my Nokia E90
2 comments:
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just randomly found this post. Your post reminded me of those sweet days when I was a maths student. I have used the casio fx 4500p, an excellent scientific calculator because it had a powerful programming language that taught me programming. Have you used Casio graphing calculators? Do you write code to solve your maths problems or you mostly only use the built-in formulas and libraries? I coded a lot on my calculator in college days, no doubt I became a professional programmer :)
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