Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end?

Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by adrianpike on Monday September 23, 2019 @01:56PM (#21051503)

Timely thing - I actually dusted off my TI-89 over the weekend doing taxes. There was something about a focused tool with a physical number that I was really desiring. I have fond memories of tapping around on it in high school.

Turns out it sucks, and I wound up just buying one of the $5 solar basic calculators and was way happier. I can't wait for this monopoly to get blown up.

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by mindcrime on Monday September 23, 2019 @03:04PM (#21052346)

Opposite story here... I still use my TI-89 (or my even older TI-86) from time to time, even when sitting in front of a PC that has R, Maxima, Gnuplot, Axiom, Sage, etc. installed. There is something about the format of those old TI calculators that I find oddly appealing for whatever reason.

That said, when I don't have a hand-held calculator handy, I usually just fire up bc or R when I need to do some quick calculations.

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by bscphil on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:33PM (#21054912)

> I usually just fire up bc

Those who prefer RPN should check out dc! It's my preferred calculator for simple calculations.

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by fireattack on Monday September 23, 2019 @03:36PM (#21052711)

What is bc?

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by jumelles on Monday September 23, 2019 @05:59PM (#21054214)

If you're using bc for the first time, be aware that you almost certainly want to run bc -l -- otherwise no decimals will be displayed and you'll get whole number answers to everything.

The -l flag changes that behavior to instead use 20 decimal points.

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by zosterops on Monday September 23, 2019 @03:56PM (#21052912)

An arbitrary precision calculator language. It can be used as a scripting language or from an interactive shell. It is part of POSIX so you are running Linux you probably have it installed.

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by mindcrime on Monday September 23, 2019 @03:49PM (#21052832)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bc_(programming_language)

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by the_pwner224 on Monday September 23, 2019 @03:21PM (#21052550)

I had a TI nSpire CX CAS in high school (like the 89 but with a color LCD screen and hackable with Lua and C - it runs Doom and GBA/NES emulators).

In the final year of high school I was taking a class that did not require a graphing calculator, so I bought a TI 36X Pro, an advanced scientific calculator. It has excellent 'UI', tons of functionality, and the buttons feel great to type on (though after a long time they will still start to get mushy). I actually used to carry both of my calculators with me, the CAS for when I needed it and the 36X for normal usage since it felt better to use.

It's not a school monopolozer like the 84/89 so it's priced well, at <$20. I bought another one in college after I lost the first one. I'm doing CS so I don't need it often, but I find it to be worth keeping around.

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by Baeocystin on Monday September 23, 2019 @09:35PM (#21055615)

The 36X Pro is my surprise modern favorite of the non-graphing 'cheap' sci calcs I use. The keys really do feel good to use.

(I still consider my HP 48SX My Precious, though. Yay RPN and all that.)

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Re:Is the era of the $100 graphing calculator coming to an end? by unsignedint on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:38PM (#21142750)

Thanks to this thread I bought TI-36X Pro myself. While I don't have constant needs to calculate thing, I was looking for a good calculator that I can keep in my bag. This seems to be a perfect calculator for that purpose, price and feature wise.

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