anyone think its wierd that in the last 49 min there have been 3 news articles?

Eric just sat down at his computer, checked his email, and realized he had to post some news ;-).

Yeah, pretty much :p.

Should've put all of them together--I know it takes long enough to write a news article (though it doesn't look like it).

oh yeah 12th post

I already have a SE. It's great. The graphing is a lot faster than a normal 83+, and the preloaded apps is a nice feature. I finally have enough space to load a bunch of apps! The colors are the coolest thing I've ever seen. I despise the iMac colors, but the SE has a nice color scheme. MirageOS works almost flawlessly (pressing On gives weird results sometimes).

I was just amazed at how tough it was to take the cover off...of course, they shipped it to me with the screen uncovered...why?!?!

lol :P

Same problem here. I have to sort of dig my fingers into the case and yank hard to get it off. My other calcs were hard, but never this much.

Does it really look good? From the pictures I saw when it was first advertised, the 'silver'ness was more like a frosted clear grey case. I'll have to wait till the local electronics store gets them . . .

I am deeply annoyed by the choice to have a frosted clear color for the TI-83+ SE outer casing. Why not just have a non-frosted, clear casing? I think it would be much cooler since you could look at all of the parts inside the calculator without taking it apart, instead of attempting to look through frosted plastic casing trying to figure out what all of those blurry shapes are inside of it.

I hate SE's casing color. Why don't they make it regular, black color instead? This colorful cover reminds me of iMacs's which I really hate (you don't need a colorful calculator, it's just a tool).
Also, why paying $130 for SE, when it's better to buy an 89 which has more features and horsepower?

I agree with you that it is pretty stupid to buy the 83+se when the 89 is much more powerful for almost the same price. imacs may be some of the ugliest computers we've ever seen, but look at Apple's main market: graphics people (both professional and personal), and Joe Average. To avoid going into a rant, I'll stop here on Apple. However, TI is targeting Joe Average Jr. with the 83+se, hoping that junior will be terrified of the half-GUI/half-CLI interface of the 89, and will spend the same amount of money on a technologically inferior calculator, giving TI a much bigger profit margin. The ONLY time the 83+se has an advantage over the 89 is on the ACT, since the latter is banned from it (does anyone know if the HP equivalent(s) of the 89 are banned too?).

As far as casing colors go, I hate it when companies tease you with what's inside by using a translucent plastic case. Either make it opaque or transparent, but not translucent. Despite my dislike of the frosted appearance, it makes sense, since most electronic devices generate potentially disruptive radio waves, and must be shielded. This is generally done with either some sort of steel (often steel mesh) or copper (NSA headquarters uses copper mesh built into the exterior walls--basically a giant Faraday cage). If TI made it the normal black/gray color (the 82/83 line is actually gray--the 85/86 and 68k lines are black), it would defeat the purpose of the name, although it does look more like it should be called 'platinum edition' instead of 'silver edition'.

I personally just detest the whole idea of yet *another* 82/83 series calculator. TI needs to realize that their target audience for the 83+se (at least right now...) uses the 86 and/or 89, not the 83 or 83+, so why would they want an 83+se? They wouldn't; they would much rather see an 86+, but TI has repeatedly turned down requests and inquiries from several people of various statures in the TI community.

If you can't understand the TI89 you need to go back to elementary school:)
I also (unfortunately) believe that the HP49G and 48 CAN be used on almost all standardized tests, they look at the calc and say something like, "Never seen that one before, is it a TI89?, No? well then you can use it."
Stupid Procters, oh well, some places DO allow the TI89 on the ACT.

The 89s are banned? I just thought it was stuff like the 92(+), since they have a keyboard? The 89 really can't do all THAT much, just solve systems of equations and all the other stuff that you are supposed to know. And open up a dictionary on the TICT eBook reader . . .

You might be surprised, actually... I took my 89 to the SATs this weekend, and was amazed by what it could do in conjunction with the Geometer's Sketchpad to some of those problems. After one of those "15-minute" math sections, I had about nine or ten minutes to kill, so I started entering one of the section's geometry problems into the calculator... I probably shouldn't have been surprised, but the 89 solved it right out.

Granted, if you can't figure out such problems on your own, you most likely wouldn't be able to figure out how to use GSP, and, furthermore, it took me about three or four minutes just to enter the problem, but it still theoretically could have proven an advantage to someone somewhere. Symbolic calculators just don't belong on these reasoning tests...

Yes - I have to agree with the ACT comment. I took the ACT, they placed me in the front row, then proceeded with reading the test information. They asked if anyone had a TI-89, HP48G/49G, etc. and said that they would not be able to use them on the test. However, never did I see them once check what calculator people were using. I could have performed the TI-89 -> TI-83+ case switch and they would have not known the difference! I was really quite surprised. However, I don't think the 89 would have helped that much on the test. The 83+ could do a lot of it if you know how to enter problems correctly and what to look for in the answers.
The CAS would have been nice though - I have to admit! I probably would have finished that section. I suck at the kind of word problems they had. *sigh*

look. the ti-83 plus is A LOT easier to understand and use. as for the memory part of it, the SE has 1,600,000 or more bytes of memory. the most any calc has ever had, including 89 (correct me if im wrong). and the 86 can't have apps, and it isn't upgradeable like the flash calcs. The SE comes with preloaded apps, which is very nice beacause normally you have to pay for those. it is also much faster than ti-83 and 83 plus. But i agree with the stupid casing color part. hope this clears up the all the bad crap people have been saying about the calc.

Two words on the os: user-obsequitous.
What good is that much memory in that weak of a calculator? Flash apps crash a lot more than the os, btw. The 89 is upgradable, has a bigger screen, still vastly superior computational abilities (check the last page of this board for more on this...), and a decent amount of memory, both RAM and flash. The 83+se still has only 24KB of RAM. The bad things have been said because they are true. The 83+se is the imac of TIs.

easy to use. not complicated. 83 plus is also upgradeable. ive never had an app crash. prograns don't need to be 184k or whatever big to be good. most people don't keep things in ram. although they probably should've put it up to something like 35k.
once again, i also hate the cover and casing.

Ok, I made a typo: it should be "user-obsequious." Click the link for the Jargon File's definition. In order to find out how to archive and unarchive, people have to either actually pick up their manuals or ask someone who knows. Maybe the 89's oses are just more unstable. Yesterday, Phoenix 7.3 caused an invalid page fault on my calc, giving me a stack dump and a ram clear (I had just about everything important archived, tho...except for a list of songs to download, but that's replaceable). The 89 is upgradable, and TI *should* have come out with an 86+ instead of this crud. I'm starting to rant again, so I'll stop for now.

my friend had a 89 in math today, and it was the most confusing thing i had ever seen. The 83 Plus IS MUCH MUCH easier.

You missed my point and didn't read the link, so here's the definition linked to above:

user-obsequious adj.
Emphatic form of user-friendly. Connotes a system so verbose, inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded that it is nearly unusable. "Design a system any fool can use and only a fool will want to use it."

I've concluded this is the newest addition to the list of computer field Holy Wars, so each side knows that for their own reasons they are logically correct and the other side is logically incorrect. Neither side will win, so let's not waste any more space on ticalc.org's server with senseless flames. Otherwise, I'll probably start quoting more jargon file things, such as Hanlon's Razor or O'Toole's Corollary to Finagle's Law, a generalization of the correct form of Murphy's Law.

I just remembered Holy Wars NEVER END...oh well...

i tried going to the link and it wouldn't bring me there

Apparently the url is one character too long for the cgi scripts on the server. The same link is above, so just change the extension to .html in the window that opens and it will work.

On a minor technicality, you are wrong about the memory size being the most. The 89 has a 2MB flash ROM chip, as well as 250KB of RAM. That totals to 2353152 bytes. The OS for the 83+(se) is somewhere between 128KB and 384KB, making it slightly less than that of the 89. If TI rewrote the 89's OS in hand-hacked assembly like the z80 OSes are, it would be an even more profound difference, as the 89 would have more of its massive flash ROM free. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same flash ROM in the 89 and 83+se, just with sharp differences in the OS sizes. However, RAM is definitely a victory for the 89, as is the fact that it can handle numbers much longer than the z80 calcs (even the 85/86): it can handle integers up to 614 digits long, with ALL their digits, and is accurate to up to 14 decimal places on floating point numbers, much better than the 12 and 10, respectively, for the 82/83(+(se)) series.

thanks for clearing that up then...

There're quite a few people who have absolutely no clue where to start when using an 89. Remember, these calculators aren't just for the hardcore, but for the general public. The 83 interface is used more in schools than the 89's is and most of the teachers use 83's.

The 83+se is for the sector of the general public who want to look hardcore without putting in the effort to *be* hardcore. IMHO, no self-respecting hardcore calculator geek would buy this Timac.

I think it looks good, but that's just my opinion.

Me 2.

I think the frosty cover looks awesome!!! It is soo sweet!!! I don't know what is wrong with ya'll.