I'm assuming this is released in the United States...

Hopefully I can save enough to get this. New hardware is nice, but too bad they can't put in a regular headphone jack...

I suspect the minijack was a tradeoff between cheap and teachers. It's really easy and incredibly cheap to use a predefined, standard hookup, when compared to making an in-house solution. They needed one out, one in, and one neutral. Stereo headphone jacks fit the bill perfectly: three channels, and a hookup that the target audience is already familiar with and, for all intents and purposes, can't screw up. It's really hard to insert a link cable backwards. The other consideration is teachers. When presented with a choice, they'll probably go with the calculator that doesn't let students use it as an mp3 player. (In my high school, if you had a device that played music [iPod, CD player, whatever] you got three days suspension and the device confiscated until your parents came and picked it up. CDs without a player just got confiscated unless you had a teacher's note.)

The new USB ports are a pre-made spec., ready for transmitting bigger files faster. Yes, you can screw up and plug it in backwards, but you have to push really, really hard (no personal experience).

suspension for a cd player? that sucks. what's the logic behind that? If I couldn't bring my mp3 player to school to listen to on the bus, I would go crazy.

Yup. And a week or possession of cell phone.

And that's why people always wondered about those odd adapters I always carried…

that is a bit strict. getting in trouble for possessing a CD player when I was in High School it seemed like all that happened if you were listing to music when you shouldn't be was they told you to stop or in the worst case you're player got taken away. what sort of evile people run your school?

The old principal was a Luddite.

That would really suck, I always listen to music on my laptop during study hall. We are not really allowed to, but I do it anyway. The worst they will do is tell you to put it away, and then the next day they forget all about it.

I can't believe it!! I just bought a new 89 Titanium a few days ago! If only I had known...

Man, that's a real bummer.

Email TI and ask them for an upgrade.

You could just return it to the store you bought it from, stores usually have a 90 day return policy.

Great idea! I only wonder if the games will go at an extremely fast rate, other than the ones that are based off the timers. Maybe those are different too? Just have to wait and see.

If you can manage to get them to work at all, I'd say they'd probably run fast, but not that much faster. Timer/clock programs oughtn't run faster, as the calc. uses a quartz oscillator (like a watch) to measure time.

It depends if the rendering is a bottle neck.
For the fat engine 3d games expect a frame rate increase.

I just got one with HW4 for my birthday a couple weeks ago. I can't compare 3d games with the regular TI-89 because I don't hae one, but boy I CAN say that it is pretty fast.

Well, the TI84 is fully compatible with 83+ games, but its processor is faster. The way they get around this is by having the CPU run at a slower speed for asm programs, unless you set a special flag. I'm wondering if TI is doing the same for HW3/4.

I don't think so, as the speed increases in the 68k line are from ~10MHz > 12-14MHz > ~16MHz. That's nothing. The 83+ line went from 6MHz to 15MHz - even with the speed limiting, several incredibly simple BASIC games are unplayably fast on my brother's 83+SE, which has the 15MHz proc. Moreover, Olivier's benchmark program comes out with different numbers, and it's opensource, so you could see if it disables a limiter, which I doubt it does.

the AMS is the same so if there was a way to limit the speed then you probably can't access it from the AMS. Maybe they added more HW ports that are usefull

Well I'm going to run out and buy a HW3 right now so that I can have one of each version. Still looking for HW1.

This is absolutely wrong. The 92-series is still on HW2.

Why would TI update the ti-92, it has been succeeded by the voyage 200. It anything they would be updating that.

That's what I meant: 92-series is the 92, 92+, v200.

isn't the V200 equiviant to the HW3 titanium?

In terms of memory and processor, the V200 is the same as HW2. However, the V200 has a bigger screen, something that the new Titanium can't fit into it's handheld design.

Hmmm... I thought the V200 has 2.7Mb of Flash memory while the HW2 TI-89 & 92+ have 700Kb of Flash memory.

Oh geez, my mistake. I meant to say HW3.

Ok. I still have the TI-89 Titanium with HW version 3, AMS 3.10. Since you guys have heard/talked about the new HW version 4 (I bought the TI-89 Titanium approximately July of 2004), does that mean that I have to buy a new TI-89 Titanium with HW 4 or...? I don't want to cough up another TI-89 Titanium with the same stuff, but with different HW versions. Although, I could still save money if I still use the same HW 3/AMS 3.10 stuff, right? Otherwise, I'd have to cough up another US$150 to US$160 for another one, huh? :-| Let me know what your comments/opinons would be. Thanks!

Ultra_64

Of course you don't have to buy a new calc. TI will still support your old calc., and it still works, I presume. It's like Apple or Dell releasing a new laptop with a 2.16GHz Core Duo, when you have the exact same laptop, but with a 2.00GHz Core Duo. Do you have to upgrade? Absolutely not. Could you? I guess, but it's really pointless. As far as we know, this adds nothing but a (possibly) faster processor.

> ... TI will still support your old calc., ...
I have to call BS on that. They are not releasing new OS versions to run on my HW2 calculator.

They'll help you if you call them. I call that support.

but both calcs use the same OS. I think that the new titanium is like HW2 for the "legacy" 89's, the same thing just updated a little bit. I think that everything will work the same way except for the processor speed.

but TI is not releasing AMS 3.10 for the hw2 or hw1 calcs.

Probably because they don't work on it. Does Microsoft support running Vista on 286? No, because it simply won't work.

Your analogy is flawed. TI makes small changes to the hardware. It's not like they're increasing the speed of the processor by six thousand times, or increasing the memory by an order of magnitude. The reason the older HW models don't run the newer OSes is because TI makes it so, so they can sell more calculators.

... never mind. It's the money talking.

But those have different model names. They did release AMS up to 2.09 for the old HW1 (and they did release 3.10 for a HW2 calculator: the Voyage 200), so HW3 will probably get the same treatment (i.e. get upgrades as long as the HW4 Titanium does, too). Of course, they could stop publishing upgrades for both HW3 and HW4 if they decide to concentrate their efforts on the TI-Nspire instead.

You are correct.

It is - they're exactly the same except the Ti is smaller and has USB.

HW2: 12MHz, 700Kb Flash, no USB
V200: 12MHz, 2.7Mb Flash, no USB
HW3: 12MHz, 2.7Mb Flash, USB

Would it be safe to say the V200 is a HW2+?

I like to call it HW2.5, but HW2+ gets the same across. They really should have changed the version.

The faster the processor... the more battery power it will use.. The Ti-89 is meant to last for quite a while on the batteries..not like the Gameboy,

You have a good point there. I didn't realize that the faster processor the TI-89Ti has, the more power drain the batteries eat up... Hmm..... I guess it's kind of pointless, but... unless if speed or power is more in someone's mind, that would "help" speed things up a bit, comparing between 12 MHz and 16 MHz.

Oh well.

Ultra_64

Not so fast...

Faster does not necessarily mean more power unless nothing else changes other than speed. The processor could be more efficient (for example: Intel Core Duo), or the motherboard could be more efficient. The additional efficiency could negate the higher power consumption.

What I am trying to say is that we "could" have a new TI-89 that was "designed" to run faster and longer than previous ones.

Is this the case? I don't know. But, I tell you what... this was definitely a factor in the design consideration by TI.

Yeah, you could install a different processor. However, the speed of the 68000 processor is being discussed.

I belive that the processor is able to goe to 20mhz whith out trouble.

The only problem is that the MC68k isn't a very efficient processor... not like the ARM 7 in the Gameboy Advance.

It's better than x86.

That is hard to say now that macs are starting to use x86.

No, x86 as a processor spec. still stinks. It's simply that there is far more R&D put into x86 than PPC.

Hm, my Voyage 200 has got HW2 and AMS 3.10. And I haven't got the problems that some Titanium users have when they want to play games. I'm satisfied with calling my calc a HW2.

That's because all the problems with the Voyage 200 were fixed awhile ago.