Ti-84 Evo

https://education.ti.com/en/products/calculators/graphing-calculators/ti-84-evo

by thatxliner • 3 months ago

603 480 3 months ago

education.ti.com

$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...

retired5• 3 months ago

For a $10 BoM and maybe a year of R&D I would say that $160 is bad.

aaronbrethorst4• 3 months ago

A TI-83 was about $100 in the year 2000, and it doesn't look like it's that much cheaper today. I would've expected Texas Instruments to try gouging their very captive market.

andyfilms1• 3 months ago

Their engineers are still trying to figure out how to make backlit keys. Just give them another two decades, I'm sure they'll crack it.

sobellian• 3 months ago

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

xbar2• 3 months ago

It is an abysmal value. Your corner drugstore sells an AP/SAT approved calculator for $9 to $29.

I will buy one anyway because calculators remain a modest luxury that I want to indulge.

eiiot• 3 months ago

Interesting that this doesn't seem to include a computer algebra system like the Nspire CAS. Wonder if it's a testing environment compliance thing?

ezfe3• 3 months ago

Absolutely is

mettamage• 3 months ago

It runs Python!

National exams will be wild for the kids capable of programming or vibe coding.

retired5• 3 months ago

With a 156MHz processor and 3.5 megabytes of user-available memory the kids will even learn how to optimize their code!

guizzy• 3 months ago

Built to be a reliable learning tool, not a distraction

15 year old me in math class programming my loaned TI-82: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

IIAOPSW3• 3 months ago

Jokes on you, you learned to program.

a966• 3 months ago

Didn't let schooling interfere with their education.

Yossarrian22• 3 months ago

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.

alfalfasprout• 3 months ago

Heck, you could do a decent amount with the CAS back in the TI-89.

selectodude• 3 months ago

Decent? I'm not sure the new CAS models do anything that the TI-89 didn't.

15155• 3 months ago

Which is why it was notoriously banned from exams.

metadat• 3 months ago

TI-89 is the GOAT!

NetMageSCW2• 3 months ago

The reason is exam requirements - some professional certifications don’t allow CAS calculators and have other restrictions.

loeg• 3 months ago

It doesn't help students learn if the tool does everything for them. This isn't a tool for professionals.

JoshTriplett3• 3 months ago

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 class that's trying to teach you to do algebra. That is in some ways easier than "don't use this function of the calculator".

ndriscoll8• 3 months ago

My linear algebra class used F_2 as our field probably half the time that it was specified. Realistically almost any course probably doesn't need calculators at all (or they could at least be kept for homework). If you're not teaching arithmetic, you keep the arithmetic simple. If you're not teaching algebra, you keep the algebra simple. etc.

Ekaros4• 3 months ago

It is not really classroom. It is more so setting testing standard that matches the standardised testing that schooling aims for. This ofc then extends to testing in classroom tests as that is best way to prepare students.

Not that any of this matter anymore as it can be entirely replaced with LLMs in near future.

ndiddy2• 3 months ago

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.

xp84• 3 months ago

I don't think it's been about costs or CPU for at least 20 years, but isn't it more that for kids to learn to do math, it's better not to have CAS always at hand? So that's why there are some in the lineup without it.

sosborn• 3 months ago

CAS capabilities are prohibited in the SAT: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/what-to-bring-do/calcu...

hatsunearu2• 3 months ago

Wow, they used to be allowed back when I was in high school. It came in super clutch for SAT but much more importantly AP. Our school mandated the original CS CAS and drilled us on how to use it effectively and I got good mileage out of it through high school testing and college.

I lost it at some point and got the version 2 and I would occasionally use it for work. I wish it had USB-C because who has a mini-B cable for charging these days

deckar01• 3 months ago

They let you write python programs as long as it’s from memory though. I wonder what the code golf looks like for a rudimentary python CAS. If you could evaluate the equation without needing to parse it, I bet you could get a lot of mileage out of a black box gradient decent routine. The analog circuit solver I wrote for my nSpire (without CAS) was ~11kB. https://github.com/deckar01/pylacc

dheera• 3 months ago

Honest question: Why do we need physical graphing calculators anymore? Can't this just be a phone app?

That screen resolution for one is horrible for 2026.

loloquwowndueo• 3 months ago

Mostly for students in settings that may disallow either smartphones or calculators with specific advanced features (schools, SAT exams etc)

Also I don’t know about you but these days I welcome stuff that allows me to stay away from the damn phone.

8note• 3 months ago

i moved my ti-89 to be a phone app, but it was much much slower to type on the soft keyboard than it is to press the actual buttons.

mkprc2• 3 months ago

It's about ensuring "academic honesty" on exams. Also, it's nice to have buttons rather than a touchscreen. Also, there is something to be said about using a device with a different form-factor than the one on which a student also scrolls TikTok/IG and distracts themselves otherwise.

akgoel• 3 months ago

You don't. Most academic uses are now replaced by desmos, which is also used on the SAT. It's free, it's fast, and it does most of what you need.

saagarjha7• 3 months ago

I am pretty sure I could use a TI-89 Titanium in the dark even now

JoshTriplett3• 3 months ago

Not just an upgrade — an EVOlution

Oh no.

girvo• 3 months ago

You’re absolutely right!

…LLM-isms are like nails on chalkboard I swear. Instant turn off the moment I read them.

Even if they’re maybe not lol, doesn’t matter my visceral reaction is negative.

Apocryphon• 3 months ago

That's just what standard marketing copy sounds like.

...which perhaps says a lot about the corpora that the models are trained on.

smlacy2• 3 months ago

156 MHz!!!!

billforsternz2• 3 months ago

Surprisingly high or surprisingly low?

stabbles• 3 months ago

This made me double check if it wasn't someone's vibe code scam website.

moffkalast2• 3 months ago

Genuine question, who uses these in practice? In my experience, calculators beyond the basic were always banned in high school and college, cause everyone's so afraid people might store something into them, and afterwards it's just matlab and python. It's not like laptops aren't a thing that everyone has on hand.

NetMageSCW2• 3 months ago

You may have gone to a poor high school and college. I saw plenty of calculator use in high school and college a long time ago.

moffkalast2• 3 months ago

Sure calculators were allowed in some cases, the "scientific" kind, not the graphing kind.

But yes I would agree. So much time spent making sure people don't learn to use the tools they'll always have on hand. Programming exams on paper and that kind of inane bullshit.

Toutouxc• 3 months ago

Poor? In what sense? I graduated a few years ago (in Europe) and I think I could’ve gone through my entire education without owning one. Math, for me, went from nice numbers to ugly numbers that you had to do by hand (because that was the point), then to just letters and squiggles.

At no point was there a need to work with hard numbers or to learn to work with a physical calculator (I haven’t seen one in the wild in years).

pclowes3• 3 months ago

IIRC You don’t use them in the dumb kids class much, you use them a fair amount in the sort of smart class, and you don’t use them much in the actually smart class.

Kwpolska• 3 months ago

Those are permitted in schools and even exams in the US, for example. That’s also why they’re often so limited, to make the exam cartels happy.

V99• 3 months ago

These have been standard equipment (that you buy, or the school loans out) in middle-class US high school math since the 90's (and gone basically unchanged since then). The math books even have content tailored to particular models so that you'll have to buy them instead of alternatives from other vendors.

kenanfyi• 3 months ago

Electronics engineer here. I use my HP Prime G2 daily in the lab for basic things as well as quickly calculating complicated stuff, since you can pretty much program it to do whatever you want.

You might say why not use Python or Matlab?! It‘s true that you don‘t need a small handheld device to do engineering calculations where there is a ton of other much stronger and free options out there. But the thing is, a calculator is a pure dedication to one thing. You turn it on, you do your calculation, get the answer and move on. It gets out of your way. Plus it is a better feeling to type stuff using the dedicated buttons in a calculator than using a keyboard.

LeoPanthera• 3 months ago

What calculators are you guys using that aren't in academia anymore and don't need the "exam approved" limitations?

Or are we all just using software on our computers now.

That would be sad.

(I've had a Casio fx-991EX on my desk for a few years, that replaced a broken Casio fx-991ES. Though designed for academia, its operation is burned into my brain at this point.)

JoshTriplett3• 3 months ago

What calculators are you guys using that aren't in academia anymore and don't need the "exam approved" limitations?

I still have my TI-85, but I essentially haven't used it since I left college. For 99% of what I need, I use either Python, or what's built into Firefox (e.g. unit conversion), or DDG. For that last 1% (e.g. full CAS functionality), I tend to grab whatever web-based non-AI tool is handy.

ezfe3• 3 months ago

Web based AI tools are remarkably helpful these days since they no longer try to do math themselves and instead write python to do it.

wtallis• 3 months ago

I use emu48 on my phone emulating the HP-50g, which was almost exactly the same size as the phone so my muscle memory somewhat carries over (minus the tactile feedback of a real keyboard). I still have the physical calculator on my desk at home, with no batteries in it so it's only usable within reach of its USB cable.

Anything that goes beyond what that calculator's UI can reasonably handle is going to end up in a Jupyter notebook or something like that.

drivers99• 3 months ago

Similarly, I still have my HP-42s but I usually use Free42[0] on my phone and tablet. They also have it for desktops. It's great if you like RPN calculators. Or if anyone wants to learn about them, you can use that program and follow along with the original manual(s)[1]. It's nice to be able to handle the order of operations without parentheses.

[0] https://thomasokken.com/free42/ I should send them a donation.

[1] https://literature.hpcalc.org/community/hp42s-om-en.pdf followed by https://literature.hpcalc.org/community/hp42s-prog-en.pdf

alanbernstein• 3 months ago

Ti89 emulator on my android. Muscle memory from high school and college use is strong.

rpcope1• 3 months ago

Honestly, most of the time whatever the newest variant of the TI-30 is ends up being plenty (and what I have at my desk).

cristoperb2• 3 months ago

I still use my TI-89 from high school, but I'm interested to find if there are any open hardware/firmware calculator projects with basic engineering tools and a CAS.

max51• 3 months ago

I use a TI nspire CX CAS.

honestly, I think it makes no sense to spend more than 30$ on a calculator if it can't do symbolic math.

The way you input things like division, integrals, matrix, etc. on newer calculators like the nspire is far superior than the older calculators (eg. ti-84, ti-89, etc.). They look like how you write them on a blackboard instead of relying on purely parentheses or "," and ";" to separate parameters. It's like going from Excel to Mathcad

joemi• 3 months ago

I used to keep my old TI-82 (or was it -84?) from high school and a simpler sturdy solar-powered calculator near my desk, but I realized I always just used either my computer (IRB in the terminal usually) or Apple's calculator app on my phone and never ever touched my physical calculators. So they've now been put in storage.

JuniperMesos• 3 months ago

The most common way for me to do basic arithmetic is by opening up a Python shell and using it as a calculator. This is what I typically do when I go through my finances every few months and calculate prices for things.

linguae• 3 months ago

I collect HP calculators: I have an HP 12C, an HP 15C Collector's Edition (there are a few of them left still for sale), an HP 32Sii, and an HP 48SX. I sometimes use them, but whenever I'm in front of a computer (which is almost all the time), I find myself using the Unix dc command.

Handheld calculators are nice, but outside of exam settings, I could use a smartphone or a computer, though calculators are nice when I want to work distraction-free through something that requires performing calculations. I believe this is why HP largely exited the calculator market: HP's target market was professionals, and cheap computers and smartphones killed the calculator market for them, similar to how electronic calculators killed the slide rule. Texas Instruments, however, is still in the calculator business, largely due to their successful courting of American middle and high schools, as well as ETS and other testing agencies, beginning in the 1990s. I don't know the situation in Japan regarding calculator usage, but I see Casio scientific and graphing calculators proudly displayed at electronics stores such as Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera.

incanus77• 3 months ago

I collect as well:

  HP-35 (1972, first scientific, first in space) - in leather case
  TI-30 (1976, first low-cost scientific)
  HP-12C (1981, financial, c. 2000 remanufacture)
  HP-15C (1982, advanced scientific) - in leather slipcase
  HP-16C (1982, computer programming) - in leather slipcase with manual
  TI-30 SLR (1982, TI’s first solar-powered scientific)
  HP-17B II (1990, financial)
  TI-85 (1992, TI’s first with link port)
  TI-82 (1993)
  TI-92 (1995, TI’s first with computer algebra system)

I use the HP-16C pretty regularly when I'm working on network protocol programming. I have good apps that do it, but there's something about having the calculator right in front of my keyboard rest and turning to it that I like more. In a pinch or outside the house I'll use JPRN instead.

https://github.com/zathras/jrpn

whartung• 3 months ago

If I’m reaching for calculator, I’m reaching for my phone.

At that point I’m either using the stock iOS calculator or iHP48, HP48 clone.

It mostly depends on which page of apps I’m on and which is closest.

I like the unit conversion on the iOS calculator, easier to use for trivial calcs than the HP.

Biggest gripe on iOS is a single memory. On the HP I’m mostly hooked on the infinite stack, and that’s why I use it over the HP-42 clone app I have as well.

krupan2• 3 months ago

emacs calc. It's RPN by default, inspired by HP RPN calculators. Also allows algebraic input.

Or often just a python repl

a966• 3 months ago

emacs
python repl

Hmm...

wyre• 3 months ago

It has Python? That's pretty cool.

petra303• 3 months ago

It doesn’t have a qwerty keyboard. That would be such a pain to type on.

For some reason qwerty keyboard calculators are banned in tests.

Ekaros4• 3 months ago

I think those were aimed at different market segments. And that would be engineers, professionals and working academics that is not students.

Generally limitations in education on what was allowed led to more limited feature sets. Where as full feature set that could be upsold with qwerty keyboard was aimed for different users.

cyanureworld• 3 months ago

There's the NumWorks which is very similar for a more reasonable price, that also run Python

Jyaif• 3 months ago

And you can tell that TI pretty clearly copied the NumWorks calculator.

mikehotel• 3 months ago

Numworks is so much better. According to kids that have access to Ti and HP graphing calculators.

The hardware and software design similarities between this Evo and Numworks is a strong endorsement.

pclowes3• 3 months ago

75” 4k OLED screens would have been unobtainable when I first used a TI.

10yrs ago they would have been 4 to 5 figures.

Now they are what? A couple hundred?

How in the world is a TI graphing calculator still $160? These 30yr old calculator chips apparently hold their value like gold…

MattDamonSpace• 3 months ago

It’s got a 3x faster processor brah

pclowes3• 3 months ago

Good point, my understanding of a cubic function in 02 was totally stunted by the processor speed…

FarmerPotato2• 3 months ago

Wow, no comment yet for https://xkcd.com/768/

Yeri• 3 months ago

What's the "online calculator license" ?

"Online calculator included (four-year subscription) •($80 value)"

cristoperb2• 3 months ago

Apparently just a TI-84 Evo emulator(?) that you can run in a browser for $20/year:

https://education.ti.com/en/products/calculators/graphing-ca...

tech234a• 3 months ago

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

lvl155• 3 months ago

Biggest ripoff in academics.

There should be a cheap open source calculators for schools and exams. It’s ridiculous that TI is still charging this.

bloodyplonker22• 3 months ago

The biggest ripoffs were the textbooks. Especially the textbooks written by the teachers, themselves, who forced you to buy them.

vvpan• 3 months ago

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).

pavel_lishin• 3 months ago

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.

joebates• 3 months ago

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.

hrunt• 3 months ago

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.

hoistbypetard• 3 months ago

We made multi-player games over the link cables in the early 1990s. We certainly learned a ton from building those. It's not clear how much the calculators added to the math and chemistry classes where we were supposed to use them.

charcircuit3• 3 months ago

You could get that same educational value from programming things on a smartphone.

enneff2• 3 months ago

It’s not that the calculator was more than what students need, it’s that even for what it was the TI83/84 was way overpriced. It could have been like $20 at the scale they were produced.

iuffxguy• 3 months ago

Same! Ticalc.org was my original GitHub haha

ezfe3• 3 months ago

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

jhatemyjob• 3 months ago

Same. But I agree with the parent, I always got the vibe it was a giant racket between public schools and TI. Writing code for it was probably cool back in the 80s-90s but it's so dated now.

sethops12• 3 months ago

I used mine in highschool (20 years ago) and still use one today.

bluebands2• 3 months ago

I use mine constantly in high school (now).

badc0ffee3• 3 months ago

30 years ago, we had the option of the TI-82 Or (83?) and the 85. A bunch of the kids with the 85 were playing Tetris and some were writing little programs. I got the cheaper 82/83, and I don't actually remember using it for anything, even once, even though I did the IB track (stats, trig, algebra, calculus, etc).

cj• 3 months ago

How is that possible?

I wouldn’t have been able to function without it in school (20 years ago). But we also didn’t have iPhones.

krupan2• 3 months ago

I was in the not-TI-85 club for a while. I think I had the TI-84? You could still write programs but your variable names could only be one letter. When I upgraded to a TI-85 and got Tetris a friend who had the not-TI-85 asked if his could play Tetris. I checked out the Tetris code and saw there were less than 26 variables, so I figured it could be done. I spent several English class periods porting the TI-85 Tetris code to the not-TI-85 and I got it to work. All the not-TI-85 owners loved me, lol!

jgord• 3 months ago

concur .. better to have a 40-buck fx82 for daily math and use Desmos for graphing, than fork out 250 to 300 for a super-duper calc they wont use.

myvoiceismypass• 3 months ago

I was in (Catholic) HS 30 years ago and we used our TI-82s extensively in AP Calc.

Probably have not touched mine since college.

Groxx• 3 months ago

Definitely. At the very least, given the slow change in which ones are accepted, a cheap rental setup seems like the baseline that should exist... but everyone had to buy their own for my schools.

rangestransform• 3 months ago

I got an HP50g from Craigslist in high school that

- was cheaper than a TI

- had a primitive CAS system

- teachers had no idea how to put it into test mode

It carried me through AP calc BC, I would’ve gotten <4 off of my own knowledge alone

tombert4• 3 months ago

I had the same one. I thought it was pretty cool.

One perk I found is that if I kept it in RPN mode, people stopped asking to borrow my calculator, which was a valid excuse to learn how to use RPN, which is basically all I use now (and indirectly made me really love the Forth language).

BizarroLand• 3 months ago

Mine was a Casio fx-something. Teachers didn't like it but it didn't let me cheat and it was just the right amount of functionality to help me with math. Carried me through Pre-Cal, Trig, Calculus and Differential Equations.

levocardia• 3 months ago

Agreed, it's insane to me that in an era of Google Colab (et al) schools still require students to shell out >$100 for one of these. I'm sure there is some backroom arrangement with schools of some kind.

Arainach2• 3 months ago

A lack of functionality is the point. You don't want a full CAS or Internet search results available, or many students will just take the easy route and not learn anything.

Neither teachers nor school districts have the time or resources to audit every new tool someone wants to use, or to help students figure out how to use their preferred tool to do something - find something that works and just use that

sgerenser• 3 months ago

There’s no back room arrangement, beyond perhaps some amount of marketing from TI to math teachers. But nobody is getting a kickback to recommend the TI-84. Also, since so many people had to buy these things then stuck it in a drawer after a couple years, there’s a healthy supply of used ones on eBay and marketplace.

IIAOPSW3• 3 months ago

I learned programming on that calculator. I learned programming because of that calculator. I owe so much to that calculator.

jjcm• 3 months ago

Same.

I distinctly remember my teachers having a debate around whether or not the functions I had programmed into my calculator were "cheating". On one hand, it was a tool and notes that I had access to my peers did not. On the other hand, I had created those tools myself, and if school was supposed to train me for the real world, wouldn't I be able to use the tools I created in the real world?

BoorishBears3• 3 months ago

There are many of us, I make a living today because my dad brought home a Ti-83 Plus and I kept messing with the "PGRM" menu

eagerpace• 3 months ago

Same. I hid custom calculators behind game levels so my teacher couldn't find them.

tombert4• 3 months ago

I sort of agree.

You're paying $100 for completely antiquated hardware where its core feature is "it doesn't do much".

Pretty much any professional environment that you will need calculations will have access to a computer that can do these calculations significantly faster and better.

I thought my HP was pretty cool in high school, but pretty much the moment I graduated I stopped using it because I figured out how to use Excel and/or a programming language to do number crunchy stuff. Even for CAS stuff, I would just use Wolfram Alpha or SageMath (depending on how ambitious I'm feeling with setting stuff up).

I can't remember the last time I used a calculator outside of showing someone else how to use it.

nick49488171• 3 months ago

The interface is great for what it does though. I still use ti-83 interface with the calculator app on my phone.

DSMan195276• 3 months ago

Well I'd add to that - the real core feature is that the teacher and usually the textbook show you exactly how to use it, that's why it gets listed specifically as a course requirement.

That unfortunately is also why they can charge so much and people buy them anyway, because at best you'll be on your own to learn how to use anything else (and at worst you won't be allowed to use it at all for tests and such).

mttch• 3 months ago

There are many professional examples outside of teaching (construction, lab based science, field work, engineering, healthcare, retail) where a calculator, not necessary a programmable one, is useful because the environment restricts the use of computers due to safety, security or practicalities.

sanderjd• 3 months ago

This is probably right, but just to note that it's very much a generational thing. When I got a TI-83 (and then eventually an 89!) it was easily the most advanced handheld computing hardware I had ever been exposed to. The iPhone made sense to me, and I knew it would be huge, the day it came out because of these amazing calculators.

I know technology has moved on and all, but much nostalgic respect to these amazing calculators.

Suppafly2• 3 months ago

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 suppose it depends if you took advanced math classes or not.

al_borland2• 3 months ago

My high school required one for a math curriculum that was specifically designed with the idea that students would not need advanced math classes. It kids up for failure if they were hoping to move toward higher level math in college, as the fundamentals were never adequately taught. But at least they sold thousands of calculators to kids who would never use them again.

They actually started us on them in 7th or 8th grade.

bradchris• 3 months ago

It's wild how much curricula within high schools must differ, because my school went out of its way to teach and encourage/require its use on nearly every quiz and exam. We joked sometimes class felt more like calculator class than math class. This was Texas, too, which I hardly consider a pioneer in education. Maybe TI pride?

Now that I think about it, this could have been a strategy my high school drilled into us as a way to increase SAT scores, since TI-84s were allowed to be used there.

Rapzid• 3 months ago

Texas (TI) invented the handheld calculator after all.

stdatomic• 3 months ago

Not only did we use it several times every week for 4 years, I spent 4 years writing tons of programs on it. Best $100 ever spent, thanks mom & dad.

Merad• 3 months ago

I had a TI-83 in high school and upgraded to a TI-89 for college circa 2002. Used the heck out of those calculators because I did all the math and physics prerequisites for an engineering degree before switching to CS. It also helped me get a B in Linear Algebra thanks to holding a cheat sheet document for the final exam. I had no trouble with the likes of Calculus 3 and differential equations but for some reason the later material in linear algebra didn't click with me.

Salgat• 3 months ago

My ti-89 titanium got me through two engineering degrees. Loved that thing.

broadsidepicnic• 3 months ago

TI-86 is the one in my case. We had to buy it in high school, and I used it so much in high school and in university after (I still have it in a box), that it's the only calculator I've since used. I absolutely have to have a TI emulator on my phone, and have paid for multiple ones along the years.

I use my emulated TI-86 every other day, and prefer it to any other UI I've seen on calculators on phones.

When I have a laptop available, I of course use excel or wolfram alpha for anything demanding, but when on the go, I like my emulated TI-86.

CivBase• 3 months ago

I got a ton of value out of mine... but I graduated in 2011, when smartphones were only just taking off and relatively few people had them yet.

But my wife is also a high school teacher and one of the most consistent problems I hear about from her is smartphones being a distraction. If she lets a kid use their smartphone as a calculator, odds are they'll soon be scrolling content feeds, playing games, or chatting with others. If her school required students to have a graphing calculator with limited functionality, it would probably be a benefit to her classroom.

palmotea• 3 months ago

Simplified keypad
The keypad layout removes clutter and makes commands and shortcuts easier to see, so you can work faster with fewer steps.

I don't see it. I compared a screenshot of one of these to a older T-84, and it looks like they have same number of buttons, and the buttons are just as cluttered (except the EVO has secondary labels on the keycaps instead of the case).

That's a good thing, since one of the best things about calculators is they typically have a ton of buttons for quick access to a lot of functions.

nxobject5• 3 months ago

On my favorite designs ever? The first TI-Nspire "battleship" keyboard. Mini alpha-symbol keys in the corners of actual keys. It looked so annoying, but my muscle memory got very good at it.

https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=NMAH-DOR2014-05202...

esafak• 3 months ago

It's a shame that maths in American schools is equated with calculation. All you need to be a mathematician is a calculator!

wslh• 3 months ago

Looking at the price of this and other calculators, I wonder if there's a market for "dumb calculators" analogous to dumb terminals: a device with the calculator form factor, keyboard, and display, but where the actual computation happens on a paired computer/phone or a cloud endpoint over WiFi/Bluetooth.

Willish422• 3 months ago

The cost of these devices isn't the computation, and if anything more connectivity would probably make these more expensive and harder to use (many "smart" devices in classrooms have networking issues and if even one of them can't connect, it hurts the ability to run a lesson). I think standalone computation abilities are pretty important, and connectivity can be a downside for preventing cheating in standardized exams etc.

kristopolous6• 3 months ago

Show me a highschool math problem you can't do on a $12 Casio scientific like the classic FX-300MS https://www.usaofficemachines.com/csofx300ms-fx-300ms-scient...

There's even knockoffs of it for $1: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809744184708.html

I picked one up when the 99 cent store was shutting down. It works fine.

Look what you can get for $20: https://www.casio.com/intl/scientific-calculators/product.FX...

TI is like the Intuit of the education world. I want to love them but this is ridiculous - a N4120 celeron laptop is the same price as this new calculator - it might be a garbage laptop but it's doing a heck of a lot more for your $160 than this calculator is.

rogerrogerr• 3 months ago

The contrived ones where they make you graph stuff, but that’s about it.

vkou6• 3 months ago

There is no graphing problem that you'll be asked to solve before university that can't be plotted to a 'good enough for high school' level by hand in seconds.

Four data points is sufficient to give you a 'good enough' shape and position of a second-degree polynomial. Five or six for a third-degree one. (And you barely see them, and don't learn how to algebraically solve for their roots in high school anyways, because the cubic factoring formula is a pig.)

If you can't tell what a function's plotted shape is going to be at a glance, you haven't learned the material to the degree expected of an attentive child.

varun_ch4• 3 months ago

International Baccalaureate math has some stats questions that require a calculator that can do stats questions. Not really possible by hand in exam conditions!

kristopolous6• 3 months ago

The basic $12 Casio scientific has stats like mean, standard deviation, regression... Stats is a huge field, we're talking highschool level. I think it probably covers it

chongli• 3 months ago

My Casio FX-260 Solar IIs [1][2] (I recently bought 3 more of them) cost me $5 CAD a piece on clearance at Walmart. No battery, a modern solar panel that works great even in dimly lit rooms, and a modern SOC with all the standard scientific calculations, scientific notation, engineering notation, significant figures, and all the basic stats calculations too (sum, mean, pop stddev, sample stddev, permutations, combinations, factorials).

It’s my favourite calculator and the one I always reach for, despite having a bunch of more complicated 2-line calculators etc. It’s just so easy to use and very fast to do anything I’d want with a calculator. If I need graphing I’ll reach for Desmos. If I need algebra I’ll use Sage. I haven’t used Sage since my undergrad, however.

[1] https://www.casio.com/content/dam/casio/product-info/locales...

[2] https://www.casio.com/ca-en/scientific-calculators/product.F...

nxobject5• 3 months ago

HL or SL? (It's been a while for me, but I know I needed PDF/CDF functions... and I don't know about the optional modules/Further.)

balls1872• 3 months ago

Generating a QR code to see the graph online is kind of cool, but also kinda dumb too.

I mean, these days kids have smartphones, what's the point of a graphing calculator?

kristopolous6• 3 months ago

I'm with you. Some open source app is all they need.

However to answer your question: phone rules in classrooms vary enormously and the dedicated calculator is faster to interface when you're drilling problems in a homework setting

I finished highschool in the (gasp) 20th century so the modern classroom is certainly something I've had to learn

linsomniac6• 3 months ago

kids have smartphones, what's the point of a graphing calculator?

Many tests will not allow you to use a smartphone. My son couldn't even use the school issued chromebook on his PSAT, he had to get a loaner Windows laptop or use an approved hard calculator.

ndriscoll8• 3 months ago

Ironically builtin smartphone calculators are really bad, and one of the best ones you can download might be Graph 89 (a TI-89 emulator).

Rant/Aside: Smartphones (or at least Android) are just generally really bad at being... smart, especially out of the box. No dictionary? No thesaurus? To say nothing of built-in encyclopedia (e.g. Wikipedia). Calculator worse than the $1 scientific ones? It's astounding how obvious it is that they're meant to dumb people down and just sell you crap when you look at the complete absence of basic functionality anyone from 50+ years ago might expect them to have.

jhallenworld• 3 months ago

My favorite cheap Casio is fx-115ES Plus 2nd Edition, $17

https://www.amazon.com/Casio-fx-115ESPLS2-Advanced-Scientifi...

Includes GCD and LCM, some of the newer ones don't have them.

If you want graphing, there is the newish fx-CG100 has a nice display, but they removed Casio basic, it now only has micro Python (way too awkward to type on a tiny keypad):

https://www.amazon.com/Casio-ClassWiz%C2%AE-Calculator-Funct...

The older ones that still have basic:

https://www.amazon.com/Casio-fx-9750GIII-Graphing-Calculator...

BTW, here is a review I made of many calculators, measuring keyboard efficiency: (HP-15c still the best)

https://github.com/jhallen/calculator/wiki

quag• 3 months ago

I agree with you on the Casio fx-115ES Plus 2nd Edition. I picked one up two years ago for $11.41. It naturally writes out equations, has a backspace and is generally excellent. I still love my HP RPN calculators, but the fx-115ES works nicely for anyone who isn't using RPN or sympy.

quacker• 3 months ago

Well, the TI-83/84 are called a graphing calculators for a reason: you can plot equations and datasets with them and look at them right there[1]. Looking at graphs is huge for learning, or at least it was for me, and school isn't just about plugging things in and getting an answer (or shouldn't be, at least).

Doesn't mean it's not overpriced, but that's one reason and you can get a used TI-83/84 for like $30 or less. They pretty much never break.

-----

1. Okay, the Casio can QR-code-link you to a graph, but if I have internet/smartphone there are better graphing tools anyway, like Desmos.

kristopolous6• 3 months ago

casio can do graphs on device for under $40

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Casio-FX-9750Glll-Graphing-Calcul...

The reason you can get used ti's for $30 is because that's how much they're actually worth.

You can get a catiga if you really want for like $17: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809054964211.html

... or you can go with TI for $160 ...

hypercube332• 3 months ago

I mean a laptop running windows can use the old power toy calculator or something like speed crunch to do graphing and I'm sure Linux has countless others, with Chromebooks probably having more for free online as well, I can only assume.

pverheggen• 3 months ago

If you count basic calculus as high school level, TI89's can do symbolic integration. They're usually banned on tests for that exact reason tho.

globular-toast• 3 months ago

Can it do anything non-trivial? The algorithms for symbolic integration are extensive.

My Casio could do numeric differentiation and integration. I used this to double check my answers in my exams.

In fact, it still can as I still own and use it to this day.

threethirtytwo12• 3 months ago

The TI-89's have the same shell as the TI-83. I took the shell off the 83 and put it on the 89 as well as replacing some of the buttons.

I used this on tests that banned the TI-89.

vkou6• 3 months ago

Show me a highschool math problem you can't do on a $12 Casio scientific like the classic FX-300MS

There isn't one.

The TI-83 is just a $160 tax on every high school student. There is precisely zero use in a graphing calculator before university.

If you ever need a plot of literally any function you'd be plotting in high school, you should be able to do a very quick, very rough approximation by hand. If you can't, you haven't learned the material.

SoftTalker• 3 months ago

Graduated high school in 1984, I don't think graphing calculators existed then but if they did nobody had them. Standard "scientific" calculators were what I used for all my high school and university math.

kevin_thibedeau• 3 months ago

Most of those are counterfeit knockoffs and the buttons are unreliable. It's safer to buy an older, pre-VPAM variant of the 300 or 991 models.

saagarjha7• 3 months ago

You can turn off VPAM though, why would you not want it?

jedimastert• 3 months ago

I'm personally a fan of the ti-30xs. Still cheap and a good number of features for looking at data

chaqchase• 3 months ago

Nice to see the hardware move forward. I still wish calculators were more open, or at least less locked into school-age pricing.

nxobject5• 3 months ago

And those goddamn displays still have the pixel density of a Tamagotchi.

BewareTheYiga• 3 months ago

You will have to pry my TI-89 from my cold dead hands. I wish they still made it

Mathochist• 3 months ago

Those who have used various classic HP calculators in the past may be interested in this:

https://www.swissmicros.com/products

These are clones of various older calculators.

kstrauser8• 3 months ago

I bought a DM42n last year. I didn't need it. I don't use it so often that I can justify its purchase. Still, wow, I do so enjoy working with it. It's one of those tools that just feels good to use.

SirHumphrey• 3 months ago

There is a certain joy in working with RPN and in using a piece of technology that was designed as a tool, not as a toy or an educational appliance.

With phone emulation, I probably need half a calculator. I have three.

Ekaros4• 3 months ago

156MHz and 3,5MB user memory... Why do I feel like that is a joke these days.. I think some ESP32s are faster and have more memory, but not sure if they are fully comparable...

a966• 3 months ago

I briefly laughed out loud at another comment saying their lightbulb has more computing power than that, because that's completely plausible for a wifi bulb today.

balls1872• 3 months ago

The comments on this are fascinating. Although, I was waiting for someone to chime in with "HP is better cuz RPN."

2 dinners out for a family of four would cover the cost of this calculator. If my kid's school required this for math, I wouldn't bat an eye at purchasing one.

I needed a Ti-83 for school in 1996-1998. If you couldn't afford one, the school would loan you one for the semester. Band instruments were the same way.

golem142• 3 months ago

I was waiting for someone to chime in with "HP is better cuz RPN."

Well, it is ;) The Swiss Micros clones are pretty awesome:

https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm41x

xbar2• 3 months ago

I have 2 Swiss Micros and a pile of sapphire-chip designed-in-Corvallis USA-made HPs. The DM41x is pure joy in the hand. But I still texted the pink TI-84 EVO to my 16-year-old daughter because she doesn't like my stodgy TI-84 CE Plus (which I love).

natas2• 3 months ago

I'd take a dm42n over any Ti anyday.

thomasfl• 3 months ago

Distraction free tools like this calculator, is increasingly important to help keeping focus.

ndiddy2• 3 months ago

From here: https://www.cemetech.net/news/2026/4/1062/_/ti-84-evo-calcul...

3x Processing Power - Matching one of the speculated options, the calculator appears to use an ARM Cortex CPU, finally retiring the z80 and ez80 family of CPUs that were used in three decades of TI-83 and TI-84 Plus graphing calculators. It's running at 156MHz, compared to the 48MHz of the older calculators. It appears likely that in an unexpected break from over 30 years of TI's operating system codebase, the OS has been re-implemented with new features natively on the ARM CPU rather than using an ez80 emulator to run an updated form of the TI-84 Plus CE operating system.

It looks like TI is finally moving away from the Z80. This must have been a pretty big engineering effort on TI's part. Like the article says, up to this point all of TI's low-end graphing calculators have been Z80 based and use the same system software that has a lineage dating back to the early 1990s. They were previously so wedded to the Z80 that when they introduced Python programming to their calculators, they did so by adding an ARM microcontroller that runs MicroPython, while the main eZ80 CPU acts as a serial terminal.

neuroelectron2• 3 months ago

Real shame since cortex has a admin TrustZone processor that is licensed to special interests only. For the educational market, this "security" is a selling point. It guarantees that a student isn't running unauthorized code or "cheating" apps. It also likely allows OTA auditing of the classroom's state.

fph• 3 months ago

What prevents a motivated cheater from swapping out the processor entirely?

als0• 3 months ago

Any secure boot design can achieve that, you don't need TrustZone to do that

xattt• 3 months ago

There’s a discussion to be had on the absolutism of technology for decisions or security, and the slow erosion of a certain intangible “discretionary” element in day-to-day life.

duskwuff3• 3 months ago

Real shame since cortex has a admin TrustZone processor that is licensed to special interests only.

This is substantially inaccurate.

1) Not all ARM Cortex series CPUs have TrustZone. It is absent on many Cortex-M microcontrollers, for example.

2) TrustZone is an operating mode of the CPU, not an "admin processor". Depending on the part, it is often made accessible to developers. (Whether that includes third-party software developers is, of course, up to the device manufacturer.)

For more information, see:

https://developer.arm.com/documentation/100690/0200/ARM-Trus...

UqWBcuFx6NV4r• 3 months ago

One-shotted with Claude Code. Chef kiss.

libraryofbabel2• 3 months ago

Much nostalgia. The TI-83 Z80 was how I learned assembly as a teenager, so I could write better calculator games than was possible with TI Basic. Many others here had a similar experience, I’m sure. It’s been a couple decades, but I’m sure I’d still remember most of it if you put me down in front of a bunch of Z80 asm code.

One thing that I remember vividly was you had no MUL or DIV, so you have to implement them yourself with shifts, adds, subtraction, etc. This was an extremely useful learning experience

apt-apt-apt-apt• 3 months ago

Same story here (basic was too slow for a phoenix/movable-ship-shooter game).

Do you think you could remember most of Z80 ASM? I looked at some old ASM I wrote long ago, and it's hard to follow the logic of the program, since most lines are messing around with the registers. But basics like 'ld hl,xyz' and 'jp/jnz' still make sense.

kmacdough• 3 months ago

I learned much of what I know about computer and low-level systems engineering from Minecraft. Watched lots of videos making CPUs and built many components myself including a full ALU with a look-ahead adder and hardware multiplication.

andrepd• 3 months ago

cemetech
Kerm Martian

There's some names I haven't heard in a while :)

vanderZwan• 3 months ago

It's kind of weirdly comforting to see Kerm is still passionate about calculators after all these years, isn't it?

mikeknoop• 3 months ago

Fun memory trip. Learned assembly on those old Z80s in middle school. I had to go re-dig up SafeGuard, a program I made by reverse engineering TI's TestGuard, to stop admins from wiping your calculator memory and all your games! https://mikeknoop.com/upload/safeguard/

yesimahuman• 3 months ago

Does this mean uncle worm won’t run on it out of the box? A tragedy

scarecrw• 3 months ago

I'm surprised to see "Approved for Exams" featured so prominently, as handheld calculators for lots of standardized exams are being phased out.

All of the exams listed are either already offered in a computerized format or in a transition phase, with the PSAT, SAT, APs, and ACT all already offering Desmos in their testing apps.

I love handheld calculators, but, especially in a time-sensitive environment, it's hard to beat a large screen and full keyboard.

jmalicki• 3 months ago

TIL Desmos. Thanks for the interesting info, seems super cool!

bluebands2• 3 months ago

for context

tests like SAT, ACT, and some AP exams are using Desmos, yes

however:

- this means you have to fiddle with a popover window and can't always see the full problem (especially when the reference sheet is also online)

- you have less muscle memory and often take longer

- harder to multitask (you use paper anyways, and the paper to calculator friction is lower than the paper to trackpad friction

- trackpads on school computers are usually worse, which compounds the problem

- some specific functions just don't exist

essentially using Desmos is like using a physical mouse/trackpad, while using your calculator is like using VIM motions and keyboard shortcuts with a concave split keyboard. it's technically more intuitive and can help in certain scenarios, but it's useful to have both.

this sounds trivial, but it's not, especially on tests where you have about or less than a minute per question

ideally you have both a handheld calculator and Desmos though

jacobolus4• 3 months ago

Ideally the tests would not require external tools at all. There's nothing that needs to be tested in the context of a high school course that can't done with pencil and paper.

corysama• 3 months ago

"Approved for Exams" make more sense when you take into account the history of the Ti family of calculators.

Why are they still able to sell what is effectively a 30 year old computer for as much or more today than when it came out? Because they managed to get the family informally standardized as "The calculator every teacher in America understands well enough to manage students who use it. Therefore pretty much everything else that could be as or more advanced is effect banned."

It was an amazing piece of kit when it first came out. No doubt you could make something 100x better and 10x cheaper today if someone really tried. But, they would fail commercially because you can't design-in 30 years of legacy in the US school system.

TiredOfLife• 3 months ago

I am from an xUSSR country. And started school shortly after the dissolution. Not only calculators were forbidden in exams, they were forbidden in classes. So calculators in school seems so strange to me.

dramm• 3 months ago

Hand reaches over and I lovingly pat the HP-67 sitting on my desk.

adamtaylor_13• 3 months ago

"Built to be a reliable learning tool, not a distraction"

They clearly haven't met a classroom of high school kids. Then again... I didn't have access to the internet in my pocket when I was in high school so....

mkprc2• 3 months ago

They're most definitely trying to ride on the recent anti-technology in school push.

neuroelectron2• 3 months ago

Is there any information on exactly what kind of processor is inside this thing? Since running python I'm thinking it's actually a low end mobile processor.

leni536• 3 months ago

How is the battery life? Rechargeable sure is nice, but the older models lasted forever on 4 AAAs (at least my TI-83). That's one aspect that would justify the low processing power for today's standards for portable computing devices.

Willish422• 3 months ago

I loved my TI-84+ SE and wish I still had it (had all sorts of custom programs on it but it got lost or stolen before I finished high school).

That said, I find it really hard to believe that they can't provide better specs and feature set for the cost. User-available memory of 3.5MB is incredibly low, especially with Python support. These could be really cool handheld computers if TI put more effort into their devices that already have a massive install base.

Currently, most of their popularity in my experience is "lock in" effect from teachers who are familiar with TI calculators and lab / curriculum materials that are specifically built around teaching through TI calculators. At this rate they're charging a lot and resting on their near monopoly status in education, which I'm sure is very profitable for TI.

There used to be a great app called WabbitEmu that emulated these devices on Android. I think they got a cease and desist but it was pretty neat to have back in the day

dmitrygr• 3 months ago

The race to run custom code on these is on :D

skrrtww• 3 months ago

But can it play BlockDude?

eunos• 3 months ago

I have no idea how on earth a scientific calculator costs almost as much as a cheap android phone. Do they use oled and snapdragon soc these days? Back in my school days a 20$ Casio seems more than enough.

randyburden• 3 months ago

I learned to program on a TI-83 and later bought a TI-84+ with the cable that allowed me to transfer my apps and games between my device and other students devices. I have fond memories of hand typing into a TI-83 BASIC for hours using code I found online at the local library - games like Drug Wars and other similar choose this or that console based games. I would later get a USB cable that allowed me to download apps and games onto my device. Good times. Decades later and I'm still programming.

tom1337890• 3 months ago

Loved it in university and still use it on my phone:

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.eanema.graph89/

commentprotocol• 3 months ago

is any of this really necessary now that we have LLMs ?

peesem2• 3 months ago

ever been to school?

WolfeReader• 3 months ago

Yes, things that are not LLMs continue to be useful and interesting even though LLMs exist.

I hate what AI hype is doing to peoples' brains here.

ziofill2• 3 months ago

About 25 years ago my parents got me a Ti84 as a surprise for Christmas and they hid it in the attic so I couldn't find it in the meantime. A few months went by and a couple days before Christmas, when it was time to wrap the presents they couldn't find it anymore. My dad went out and got a Casio something as a late minute replacement, and that was the calculator I used in high school and I never knew about this story. Then last year I found a Ti84 in my parents attic...

TheMagicHorsey• 3 months ago

Hahaha! This is great.

Somewhat related. My mom once yelled at me for losing a necklace she really liked. Then we were moving her stuff out of her house and found the necklace behind a wardrobe, wedged between it and the wall. It had been there for like 40 years, layered in dust.

linsomniac6• 3 months ago

My mom once was getting ready for work and I hear a pop and hear my mom yelling. I go in and her necklace fell off the dresser; a "dust buster" wall wart was plugged in back there and it fell across the prongs, shorting it out.

Archelaos• 3 months ago

On 9 July 1537, Martin Luther wrote in a letter to Wolfgang Capito about a lost golden ring: "Pro annulo aureo gratias tibi agit mea Catharina, quam vix unquam magis indignatam vidi, quam ubi sensit, cum vel furto sublatum, vel sua negligentia (quod nec mihi verisimile est, licet usque ingerenti) amissum, quod persuaseram ei, hoc donum esse felix omen et augurium ei missum, tanquam nunc certum esset, vestram Ecclesiam cum nostra suaviter concordare; id mire dolet mulieri."[1]

When Luther's house in Wittenberg was excavated about 20 years ago, a golden ring[2] was found that must have been deposited there before 1540. It is therefore quite likely that this is the ring mentioned by Luther in 1537.

[1] See WA, BR 8: no 3162 -- https://archive.org/details/werkebriefwechse08luthuoft/page/...

[2] Here is an image of the ring: https://www.zum.de/Faecher/G/BW/Landeskunde/rhein/geschichte...

59percentmore3• 3 months ago

Must have been closer to 20 years, 84(+) didn't come out until 2004.

Gonna be pedantic/crotchety about this because I got into advanced math classes but it was my brother who got the 84+ (I had to settle for a 83+). Guess who's the engineer now, and who's the NEET? Your kids pay attention to what (who) you value, folks.

ivangelion• 3 months ago

Genuinely not sure. Are you the brother that spited your family with a successful career or the one whose life was was doomed by a graphing calculator.

serf• 3 months ago

My guess : the engineer got the older model

Reason : making due with more scarcity increased independence and critical thinking.

I don't know if that was your point...

cwel• 3 months ago

Gonna guess you are the NEET

ziofill2• 3 months ago

ooh good catch! it was a TI-83, got confused right there (it was before 2004)

thaumasiotes• 3 months ago

I got into advanced math classes but it was my brother who got the 84+ (I had to settle for a 83+)

I had a TI-85 (maybe 86), unlike the entire rest of my school who had 83s.

There was a difference: when programming in TI-Basic, variable names on a TI-83 are limited to a single character. On the 85, you can make them longer.

But that was pretty much the only difference, and it will never come up if you're using the calculator for school-related reasons.

(For calculus, I had an 89. The differences are much more significant there.)

stringfood• 3 months ago

why are you attacking your brother lol

Philpax• 3 months ago

weird grudge to keep for twenty years, man

glitchc• 3 months ago

Sounds like he needed all the help he could get.

bloppe• 3 months ago

I don't remember there being much of a difference between the 83 and 84. Did you care about the amount of memory or the clock speed of the processor? Or was it more of a status thing.

fsckboy• 3 months ago

had to search that, NEET is India's National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

No, I was too scared to ask.

hypercube332• 3 months ago

My dad got a free palm pilot m125 or something and I used a ti/HP calculator emulator on it since my parents thought buying a $99+ calculator was too expensive. fun writing apps in basic for that thing and the games for it were the best mobile ones. I did envy people with Mario and drug wars on their calculators though.

drfloyd51• 3 months ago

I played the heck out of some space trading game based on drug wars I think. You “flew” around between planets buying and selling cargo.

I would love to play something like that again on my phone.

the-grump• 3 months ago

Every time I see a post about the TI calculators, I think about how much I dislike their interface, and it's all because I started out on a Casio.

brewdad• 3 months ago

I had a Casio because it was $10 cheaper than the TI. Man I was jealous of the "rich" kids.

ActorNightly• 3 months ago

I had a Casio that was multi color, because I thought it was cooler. Display was nice, functionality sucked.

7thpower• 3 months ago

Was this the first time you had realized that they did, in fact, love you the entire time?

rbanffy• 3 months ago

I have a happy story about Casio and college. I started college with a very limited TI-55 calculator: 51 steps and no conditional branching. The rich kids got HP-41 calculators, the average ones got programmable Casios. I got a Casio PB-700, programmable in BASIC.

Best gift ever. I could finish all numeric methods tests in a fraction of the time it took for others to use or program the ordinary calculators. It was a huge qualitative leap.

higgins• 3 months ago

nostalgia

amelius• 3 months ago

If only kids of today loved this more than their phones.

QuantumSeed• 3 months ago

If only they would build a Ti-84 RPN, I would snap it up in a heartbeat

crispyambulance• 3 months ago

Apparently, you can use it in RPN mode!

whalesalad• 3 months ago

The only thing I used mine for in high school was playing Phoenix and Drug Wars.

gigatexal• 3 months ago

I do have fond memories of my TI-82 (we couldn't afford the fancier 84 or 89). I wonder, though, after all these years did Texas Instruments corner the market and obtain an monopoly on allowed calculators for proctored tests or ... because it sure is a shame there's not competition here driving the cost of these things down and the features way up.

nathan_compton• 3 months ago

You can claw my HP48 out of my cold, dead, hands.

j2kun• 3 months ago

Python programming with 156 MHz and 3.5 MiB of RAM? Can a Python REPL even start up with that profile?

duskwuff3• 3 months ago

3.5 MB is pretty generous, actually! Some older TI-84 models had MicroPython running on a secondary ATSAMD21 processor with 32 KB of RAM - that was effectively unusable.

jsrozner• 3 months ago

I personally think this is stupid (e.g., the new interface for selecting functions). The interface on original 84 was better. I still have mine from 15 years ago. I still use it.

Beijinger• 3 months ago

Simply the best: https://www.hp.com/us-en/calculators.html

nateburke• 3 months ago

Ti-30x is all you need.

dwa3592• 3 months ago

I don't get it. Who is buying these calculators nowadays? It's expensive and any plot it can generate is 1 prompt away from the AI that students are already using. Also why is there a calculator license? what even is that?

beeandapenguin2• 3 months ago

Q: Who else had their first exposure to programming on a Ti-83/4 calculator?

throwaway85825• 3 months ago

I want a desk calculator keyboard that works with my phone. New TIs are just really cheap phones now.

legel• 3 months ago

Very very warm nostalgic fuzzy feelings here

dgrin91• 3 months ago

Why do you need an online calculator subscription? I can kind of get why you want a physical calculator, especially for a school environment, but why would you want a calculator online when you can just use... the rest of the web?

omgJustTest• 3 months ago

But when will it run GPT? (:

dbg31415• 3 months ago

But no mention of the most important feature… I just need to know that it can still play Drug Wars.

uejfiweun• 3 months ago

The Python inclusion is fascinating to me. I, like many other kids in the US, did a lot of calculator programming with the TI-84 back in school. It definitely taught me the basics in a way that made my CS classes much easier. I'm jealous of the kids who now get to make that journey with Python instead of TI-Basic.

markus_zhang• 3 months ago

Can we still program assembly on this one? There must be a way to hack it open.

idatum• 3 months ago

Bring back the HP-10c. RPN with "scientific calculator" label. Pure and simple, and approved for testing that forbids any programmable devices.

EDIT: oops, conflated with HP-35, from a decade earlier. 10c was programmable. HP-35 was not.

clamprecht6• 3 months ago

My TI-85 story. While I was in prison, around 1996 or 1997, I found out a friend had a TI-85 calculator. I realized it was programmable, so I borrowed it over the weekend and wrote a program to track his stock portfolio. It was the first time I had programmed anything in 2 or 3 years.

Then I learned that the US Bureau of Prisons had a rule against any calculator (or device) that was "programmable". So I programmed the TI-85 so its startup screen read, "TI-85 NON-PROGRAMMABLE CALCULATOR". Problem solved.

t1234s• 3 months ago

You sir are the hardest person on HN

sizzle2• 3 months ago

How long were you locked up in the clink for? Did you get any access to computers there? How did your time there affect you or change how you think? Thanks for sharing

postalcoder• 3 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lamprecht

owenpalmer• 3 months ago

70 months, or 5.83 years

clamprecht6• 3 months ago

I served 60 months of the 70 month sentence. I had a computer restriction, so I couldn't be around a computer.

Since I wasn't able to use computers or the Internet for that time, I did/read/learned a lot of things I wouldn't have otherwise learned. Learned how to make hooch (prison wine), how the law works and how to maneuver the court system (useful for both civil and criminal cases), got more fluent in French by speaking with some native French speakers from Benin, learned how to work out & lift weights (which I still do), and learned the value of freedom.

jamesbfb• 3 months ago

I feel like there’s a blog post in here somewhere…!

clamprecht6• 3 months ago

I should do an AMA at some point. There was a pseudo-AMA on reddit a while back: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/1z0yx7/first_person...

racl1012• 3 months ago

They had TI-85's in late '90s? I remember there only being TI-83s.

Tuna-Fish• 3 months ago

The -85 was released in 1992, iirc it's TI's second graphing calculator. The -83 is a later model.

Dwedit2• 3 months ago

The order was:

TI-81 (1990)

TI-85 (1992)

TI-82 (1993)

TI-80 (1995)

TI-92 (1995)

TI-83 (1996)

TI-86 (1996)

TI-73 (1998)

TI-83 Plus (1999)

TI-89 (1998)

TI-92 Plus (1998)

TI-83 Plus Silver Edition (2001)

TI-84 Plus (2004)

TI-84 Plus Silver Edition (2004)

CobrastanJorji• 3 months ago

They did! The TI-89 is how I aced the AP Math exam.

The TI-92 had recently come out, and it had a QWERTY keyboard and could solve symbolic calculus problems like "find the derivative of 2x^3". This was a problem for the AP exam, since you could just type in the problem and get the answer. They fixed this by banning calculators with QWERTY keyboards. That's just about exactly when the TI-89 came out, which also did symbolic calculus but did not have a QWERTY keyboard, and so it was totally allowed on the exam. Boom, 5/5 exam score for Jorji.

sikozu• 3 months ago

That's such a fantastic story.

nodra• 3 months ago

Love this

cyberrock• 3 months ago

Perhaps this is a foolish question: how did your friend actually use the tracker? Did he input the prices from the newspapers or TV news?

clamprecht6• 3 months ago

I'm not sure how much he actually used it after I wrote it for him, to be honest! But we did have access to daily newspapers, and some of us got weekly stock charts called "Daily Charts" by Investor's Business Daily (all paper, of course). Some of us were into trading stocks (this was during the Internet boom 1995-2000). Another weird skill I learned that is still useful to this day.

adi_chaa• 3 months ago

this made me giggle lol

pizzafeelsright3• 3 months ago

You're a hero of mine so here is my story.

Me in math class in 1996 - I had a TI-82 things are programmable so I have no formal education, my parents are illiterate, and taught myself to program, and I begged them to buy me one.

I spent time learning how to code on it, writing from scratch, the game Spyhunter.

I couldn't figure out how to draw with lines or pixels so I used ASCII or text.

I presented this to my teacher who told me "these aren't for games". I was crushed.

clamprecht6• 3 months ago

The fact that you made a game on a device that "wasn't for games" is even cooler.

MrBuddyCasino• 3 months ago

Seems like everyone has such a story about a teacher. „No you can’t read more advanced books because the current ones bore you“ etc etc

What is the matter with these people.

Sardtok• 3 months ago

What a shit teacher: "No, don't be creative and learn. Do only as you're told."

mal10c• 3 months ago

I have an almost identical story. I wrote a few games: snake and a choose your own adventure fantasy thing. And likely others that I can't remember, but yeah, I had a teacher tell me basically the same thing. I was pretty sad because those really took a lot of time.

clamprecht6• 3 months ago

In high school our computer class was in BASIC. They taught us to swap two variables A & B like this:

  h = a
  a = b
  b = h

But I knew the BASIC we used had the SWAP command. On an exam, I used SWAP A,B instead of the above. I got the lowest passing score, a 70%, and the teacher wrote, "Do it our way please". No thanks Mrs. Mott, I'll take the 70.

andai• 3 months ago

I relay to you a nugget from my ancestor: "Man, this teacher sounds like a real shithead!"

balex• 3 months ago

Now that's a tattoo right there. Never forget.

rrr_oh_man• 3 months ago

Would you be open for an online coffee sometime? Your life sounds wild.

znpy• 3 months ago

Since we’re sharing stories…

In high school my stats teacher told us we had to get a proper calculator. She didn’t set any upper limit so i went down the calculators rabbit hole… and got an used ti-86 from 1999 off ebay for 35 euros (this was in 2007 or so).

I programmed software to solve exercises in ti-basic and spent every lesson doing essentially software testing: basically whenever a classmate was called to the blackboard to solve an exercise I’d input the exercise data and verified I got the right results.

I got 9.5 out of 10 to the immediate next test. The teacher took off half a point because i miscopied a number (0.3 rather than 0.03, i still remember that after almost 20 years). It would have otherwise been a perfect test.

Fun times.

I still have that calculator, i turn it on every now and then.

I remember naming that calculator “Annarita”, like a girl I used to like and that (of course, lol) barely knew I existed at all.

hcrisp• 3 months ago

My TI-85 story involves the fact that it only had 2D plotting (though I think newer models such as the TI-89 had 3D).

I had a 3D calculus class so I wrote a program in it to plot a 3D isometric mesh of a surface using the 2D rendering library. It was slow but got the job done. I used it to help pass a test or two.

I also experimented with drawing random surfaces and objects like a tire. They looked pretty cool for a calculator screen.

The math lab at the college had a cable which you could use to take data off or put it on so you could in theory have exchanged programs with others but this was before the internet so I didn't.

I still have mine and enjoy the sliding the cover off - a trip down memory lane.

Later I rewrote the program in QBasic on a PC for fun and it was lightning fast!

swasheck• 3 months ago

i created a program to make it appear like i wiped my formulas before before a calc 2 final in high school so that when the teacher witnessed us wipe the phones it seemed legit.

JohnBooty• 3 months ago

In HS, teachers hadn't even caught on to that possibility yet.

I programmed quite a cheat sheet worth of formulae etc into my calc. Right before the test, I dropped it onto the floor. The battery cover popped off and the AA batteries popped out.

These were TI-81s (IIRC) so no battery backup -- it was a full memory wipe every time you changed batteries. Sooooooooooooo... goodbye cheat sheet!

However, I aced that test anyway, legitimately. Creating the cheat sheet actually helped me to learn the material. There's a lesson or two in there somewhere...

racl1012• 3 months ago

That is the coolest graphing calculator I've ever seen.

easygenes• 3 months ago

This has me pining for a future professional class CAS 3d graphing calculator.

I'm thinking something that could be a major upgrade in spirit to the long-in-the-tooth (released a decade ago) Casio FX-CG500.

Could use the soon to be released ARM C-1 Nano and Pro cores in an SoC with stacked 2GB LPDDR4, USB-C charging to a large battery, high-res transflective LCD...

Mockup "AxiomPad Pro X1": https://enia.cc/out/axiompad-cas-mock.png

Centigonal• 3 months ago

Great memories writing games in TI-BASIC on sheets of loose-leaf paper to later transcribe manually into my TI-84+.

intrasight• 3 months ago

I didn't have a calculator until my senior year of highschool. But since we weren't alliwed to use them in tests, I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

As an engineering student at CMU, I had an HP 15c like everyone else. A few years back when I found out they are coveted, I sold mine on ebay. I have an emulator on my phone.

I assume that calculators will continue to evolve and that my grandchildren will have a Propædeutic Enchiridion.

wg0• 3 months ago

It's a beautiful device so much that hacker inside me wants to poke into what CPU they have and design a similar one in Verilog myself then put it on FPGA with similar display and it's driver then a 3D printed case and keys too.

collinmanderson• 3 months ago

Shout out to https://ticalc.org/ - the design is pretty much unchanged.

j_m_b• 3 months ago

Nostalgia aside... these things aren't really that great and are overpriced for what they are. TI sustains itself on basically extorting high schools and colleges to use that.. because most of the teachers just used these.

I'm not sure such a device really improved any understanding of the underlying mathematics that I was taught. In fact, in more advanced mathematics these machines can't even keep up.

schaefer• 3 months ago

I'll take my father's HP 49g to my grave. but if TI wanted to flirt with me, all it would take is a setting to enable Reverse Polish Notation. (I did check the features, and no mention).

shostack• 3 months ago

My ti-82/83 got me into programming because I hated math so much that I taught myself to code an app that would help walk me through how to do various problems. I got in trouble but it was worth it.

Also, drug wars, x wing vs tie fighter, and all sorts of other awesome games were definitely the fun thing to do with these.

kenjackson• 3 months ago

Who is using this on the SAT when there is Desmos?

LeFantome• 3 months ago

How are these still so slow?

wolfi1• 3 months ago

Do these graphing calculators still use Derive (tm)? pity, there is no pc version anymore

aggregator-ios• 3 months ago

I was introduced to the 83 Plus and it was simply the most mindblowing device at the time. We were given a sheet to share with our parents on why it was an important device to own/borrow. Me and several friends would trade apps through the TI-Link cable, and we would play games, write software for it and there was even a popularity rank in school about whose program was installed on more calculators.

For a lot of people it introduced them to TI-Basic which was quite capable, and for others you could get into Assembly which allowed for more powerful applications. There were 2 parts of the memory, BASIC programs were in regular memory that could be easily erased, and another part which was Flash Apps.

I later upgraded to the 89 which had a better CPU, screen resolution and processing power and it was phenomenal in helping me understand every single math class, including EE/EECS. It made me sad to see them banned in exams, because having a 83+/89/any calculator was in no way helpful in any of the exams I took, but it was more of a "control the students" thing in college. The Math department determined that because they couldn't prove that people were not using the internet/portable PC's in their calculators, that they could not guarantee the fairness of it all.

Weird argument to make knowing that a 20 year old student was engineering a full internet capable PC into a calculator at the time would have been the envy of the world (and every engineering program).

This all depends on the quality of education and not simply handing out problems that require rote memorization of the methods to solve an equation and instead derive or figure out the equation yourself after understanding the problem after which you're free to use the calculator to "plug and chug".

CephalopodMD• 3 months ago

Wasting time making games on my TI84 in the back of middle school geometry taught me how to program.

jedberg• 3 months ago

Summary of the comments in here:

* I used the programming functionality of the calculator to get around the rules

* I didn't care much for the math, but my TI calculator was my first programming experience and it's what got me to love programming

My experience is similar. We were allowed to use our TI-85s in class, but we had to go up to the teacher before the test and show him that we were running a factory reset, to prove we had nothing programmed in it to cheat.

My buddy and I had made a two player blackjack game and didn't want to have to retype it after every test. So instead we made a program that mimicked the factory reset process. You would run the program before walking up tot he front.

The only indication something was different was the three little dots in the corner indicating a programming was running, but we just covered that with our thumbs.

Ironically we never used it to cheat, only to not erase our game that we programmed!

fudged71• 3 months ago

I wonder how many of us had the exact same experience (down to those damn three little dots!)

donatj2• 3 months ago

Our study hall in Junior High would wipe your calculator as you signed in to ensure you weren't playing games, god forbid. I would claim not to have my calculator, and often not do my math homework in study hall just to avoid getting my calculator wiped.

move-on-by• 3 months ago

My experience is not much different then what you listed, except I discussed programming with my math teacher. She said as long as I was the one who programmed it, and that I didn’t share the program with anyone else, the I could use it.

Looking back on that experience, I’m very grateful to her, but she also probably didn’t realize I was programming it to also show the individual ‘steps’ to get the solution instead of just the solution.

genxy• 3 months ago

price, 165$ which is ridiculous for a device that costs them less than 20$ to build.

poink• 3 months ago

As someone who built a custom serial cable (not my idea, greetz to the original designer) to load assembly programs on TI-85s for all my friends, the “approved for exams” shit is so funny

kernz• 3 months ago

Classic hacker mindset - the rule said no programmable calculators, so you made it say it wasn't one. Security through labeling.

snvzz• 3 months ago

TI calculators peaked with TI-89/92/v200. Functionality, low latency UX, long battery life. These are still readily available in the second hand market, at very reasonable pricing (thanks to them selling well back then).

Unfortunately, ever since, they seem to have decided to imitate smartphones and focus on making restricted devices for exam taking, rather than tools to empower the user.

trelliumD2• 3 months ago

the best calculator is of course a RPN calculator, preferably a HP 48GX, but HP Prime also suffices. Swissmicros DM42N is a good second :-)

trelliumD2• 3 months ago

HP48GX rules, HP Prime is a solid second. SwissMicros DM42N is a solid third.

natas2• 3 months ago

I don't have a prime, but agreed on 48gx + dm42n without a doubt. I'd add the 50g as another contender, doesn't depend so much on external memory cards (which have the tendency to fail) and is fairly aligned with the 48/49 line.

aarc• 3 months ago

I still have my TI-83 plus. It's been with me for 25 years now! I've always kept it on my desk, despite the fact that I engraved 'KoЯn' on cover when I was 13 or 14.

rgovostes• 3 months ago

In high school I had the TI-89 Titanium. Like everyone here, I got into programming it using some USB adapter I could attach to my iMac G5 and the TI Connect app[0].

One day, vexed by something, I vented my frustration by composing a profanity-laced rant into the Feedback window of the TI Connect app. (I don't recall the proximate cause, but I remember complaining that the product itself, which is still $110 today, is a total ripoff.)

I was certainly surprised when the (sole?) TI Connect developer responded by e-mail taking umbrage at my complaints.

0: https://education.ti.com/en/products/computer-software/ti-co...

saagarjha7• 3 months ago

I just put up with TiLP which I somehow figured out how to build on macOS. I think I still have cruft from that attempt on my machine years later somewhere

alter_igel• 3 months ago

I used to doodle and make pixel art on my TI 84+ in high school. I'd spend entire classes just clicking left, right, up, down, and enter to move and toggle individual pixels with a simple program I'd written. https://timstr.website/artwork/ti84plus.html

Surac• 3 months ago

To bad it is still made for pupils and not engineers. I tried using it for computer science and math and it lost to a Casio

itrunsdoomguy• 3 months ago

Does it run Doom?

baalimago• 3 months ago

Conclusion from reading HN comments: very few used the calculator to actually calculate anything

a966• 3 months ago

Wouldn't be hacking to use things for their intended purpose.

wiz21c• 3 months ago

I use Qalculate! quite a lot (but for rather simple things). However, I miss the "physical" aspect of having real buttons. How woud this Ti-84 Evo compare ?

https://qalculate.github.io/

lqstuart• 3 months ago

I had a TI-89 in high school. I was that kid.

cbondurant• 3 months ago

Personally, I don't think I have much benefit in a new generation TI-84. I still own a TI-85, a model that was discontinued before I was born, and it is still an objectively superior tool for doing small calculations than any other alternative.

For instance, we compare the phone calculator. My phone fills a lot of really important roles besides being a calculator, ones that necessitate a password. So first I have to unlock my phone. Then I have to leave whatever app I had open before. Then I need to find the damn calculator app.

That's 5-6 seconds of friction, depending on how responsive my phone feels like being and how many times I fatfinger my password because the concept of "muscle memory" on a touch screen is practically an oxymoron. Not to mention, you cant just walk away from the desk for a moment with the calculator app left open on your phone, ready to come back at a moments notice, like you can with a dedicated calculator. Phones are just too important for that.

There's arguable pros and cons to using your PC over a calculator, but I think that discussion is a lot more nuanced. Either way, a PC is definitely less portable than your phone or a calculator.

Maybe I'll be convinced to upgrade at whatever point they add usb-c and a rechargeable battery to their lowest trim model. Not before that though.

charles_f• 3 months ago

It runs python!?

I still have my ti89, and my brother's 83. My kids will learn to write text based dealer simulation in ti-basic, then 68k assembly, like real men^.

^ they're boys so that cliche works

Schlagbohrer• 3 months ago

I always thought they should make a thin, metal, foldable 83 variant that just bends in the middle and looks like a cigarette case.

corvad• 3 months ago

The UI reminds me quite a bit like https://www.numworks.com/calculator/apps/

xyproto• 3 months ago

I wonder why they don't have a "Buy now" button on their website.

thatoneengineer• 3 months ago

I see we've finally progressed beyond https://xkcd.com/768/, in specs if not in functionality or price point.

fithisux• 3 months ago

This is a very useful gadget and without any AI

joncooper• 3 months ago

I'm an HP-12C guy since working on a trading desk and have 2 of the OG bronze colored ones and 2 of the HP-12C Platinum that are faster and silvery. But since I've been re-learning math with Math Academy I'm drawn to pick this puppy up. Should I be looking at an HP equivalent, though, since I'm an RPN convert?

kkkqkqkqkqlqlql• 3 months ago

I love that the first thing I see in the website (at least on mobile) is "Approved for exams", as if there was some other reason one would be forced to buy those pieces of garbage.

rldjbpin• 3 months ago

crazy to see the og 84 plus still shown in the comparison, still unchanged from all these years!

do they only refer to the web app whenever they mention "online" as an adjective for the calculator? just a weird situation to be in.

given the MASSIVE margin they got selling these, i really wish they had an eink display. given the performance characteristics it would have been a great fit imho.

Ti-84 Evo

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