Cool, finally.

Wow, four news items in one month.

And two of them were tipped off by me..

Now we simply have to find if it is as good as it is claimed to be...

Now the Calculators page needs to be updated for the first time in 3 years...

Heh heh heh.

Hmm. There's a link on the Calculators page, but it leads to a 404 error.

I will eagerly await September, to pick me up one of these. :D

I don't think I'll get one

Awesome. The first one to get one of these has to tell if it lives up to the hype. If this version is good, the retail version will be really nice.

Hopefully we'll get an SDK pretty quickly. (pipe dream)

Emulation on this thing would rule. From what I remember, this thing has a 100MHZ ARM processor, right? That should be able to emulate any of the current TI's easily, and most (if not all) over normal speed. The 84+ keyboard is nice for those without that knowhow, though.

Current guesses say that it emulates the 84 OS, so emulation is obviously not too hard.

Here are the specs, as best we have:
100 mhz ARM processor
32 MB of Flash memory
320x240 (or something similar) greyscale display

Let's hope they get an SDK out there quick, otherwise this thing is just going to waste. All that untapped potential..

Development tools for this calc would be fun... Does anyone know if ARM processors are reduced instruction set? I'll bet there's plenty of C compilers ready... someone'll have to make an ARM version/plugin to TIGCC. Imagine the port of Doom you could get on here!
I'm not sure if I'll get one since I already have an 89t, but if I do, I'll do my best to try and figure out how to program it. I hope it comes with a New and Improved TI-Basic or something... the thing is, it seems more education-based than just math, science or engineering-based like the 89. so it might have lots of random unnecessary features... then again IDK, I'll have to read the manual.

I looked through the reference manual and it looks like the n-spire has pretty much 89/92 Basic.

>> Does anyone know if ARM processors are reduced instruction set?

I would tend to say yes, as a (sourced) statement on Wikipedia claims they make up over 75% of all 32-bit RISC processors out there. :) Also the old expanions for it, Advanced RISC Machine, and prior to that Acorn RISC Machine. :p

The manuals make no mention about programming. At all. The only thing I've heard from someone is that it supports functions (like the AMS) and even then those are pretty limited. I also heard (I forget who said these) that it appears to use expat for XML parsing which has a track record of not having buffer overflows. It may be rather difficult to do any programming for it at all. :(

I am reconsidering buying one now. :(

Anybody know what the actual differences between these and the retail units are?

Mine did not have any official packaging in the airtight plastic. There was no CD. it did come with a calc <=> calc cable, a calc <=> pc cable (USB), 4 AAA batteries, and quick sheet of shortcuts.

Sweet! you got an nspire!
From what i allredy read in the manual, it does not seem that there is programming support. is this true?

From what I can tell, the TI-Nspire supports functions, which can be a lot like programs, except they're more limited (for example, I don't think the TI-Nspire's functions have any commands/functions that print text). It's kind of like how on 68Ks you can create functions that are like programs (but are also like mathematical functions), except they are limited.

The TI-Nspire's limited programming capabilities for their functions are, well, meant to be for functions...mathematical functions...probably even more so than, for example, the TI-83+'s TI-BASIC, which allows things like printing text.

(Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the TI-Nspire has a command or something to print text)

Don't all TIs have a command to print text? Why would the NSpire not have that command?

Because they know they have a bad rep for having calculators which have prolific gaming support. They're trying to show educators that by forcing students to use the new calculators they won't have to worry about them playing games because it isn't possible to do anything interactive.

It also rather limits the expandability in general...

It would also prevent user-interactive advanced mathematical problem solvers...like for intrest rates, quadratic solvers, conversions, single-input - multiple-calculation - multiple-output programs.

Yes, exactly. For that reason alone, they should include the ability to print text. Otherwise, sales would be extremely limited as soon as word got out. If they want to limit gaming capabilities, they should remove the ability to set and reset pixels on the screen. While they're at it they should not have made it greyscale.

You can't really force any student to buy a $135 calculator. Most will probably continue to buy either plain old TI-83+ calculators or buy some HP or Casio graphing calculators. Either that or schools will have to buy one for every single student. My class just has enough for half the class, and assumes that most will buy their own calculators. So who knows how this will work out... Heck, if it supports no interactivity at all, we might as well get nintendo ds lite. Almost the same price and they have a calc emulator for the ds anyway.

I got my on August 23rd from Schoolmart, NON-CAS edition with additional; TI-84 keyboard.
It came with two usb cables ( pc-calc, calc-calc), two printed manuals,
CD with linking software and 30 days evaluation version of software to create documents.
Also it was yellow envelope with "Getting started" manual ( about 20 pages), few reference cards about key navigation,
large poster and transparency with TI-Nspire image.
Computer Linked software reported that calculator OS version is up-to-date. At this point I'll say it is pretty full loaded,
as for installed applications the set of icons looks reasonably compete. ( No games of course :-)