[A83] Re: Hello from Central Illinois

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[A83] Re: Hello from Central Illinois


Welcome to the TI community!

You bought the wrong calculator.  Seriously.  If you want to do engineering
or scientific work, or just want to program cool stuff, then I suggest you
immediately return it and purchase an 86.  The 86 has important features
like base conversions, unit conversions, calculus functions, real string
support, real variable naming support, more power-user friendly menus, a
better solver, polynomial solver, etc.  On the programming side of things,
the 86 has a larger, memory mapped screen that allows for easier programming
and nicer effects (such as better scrolling and grayscale).  It also has
more RAM than any of the 83 calculators, and gives a whopping 24k of free,
scratch RAM to running programs, letting you do some very cool things.

For electronics stuff, you might rather have an 89 or a 92+.  These have
some cool apps available for them, like EE*Pro:

http://epsstore.ti.com/webs/ProdInfo.asp?deptid=163&catid=516&sku=526

There are also some free programs available for circuits and things.  I've
only took one electrical engineering course while I was in college, so I
don't know exactly what you need, but EE*Pro looks like it could be very
handy.  The 89/92+ calcs are very nice.  If you want something with symbolic
manipulation (solve equations in terms of variables and not numbers, like
doing derivatives and integrals for you), then definitely check them out.  I
bought an 89 when they first came out, so I haven't used the newer releases
of the OS.  I found the 89's menus to be a bit sluggish, and it was pretty
apparent that the OS was designed for the 92's body and keyboard style (it
has a full QWERTY keypad and a lot more keys).  Since you aren't a student
and thus probably don't care about it looking like the high powered math
machine that it is, then the 92+ is likely the best choice for you.

When doing simple math that doesn't involve a lot of algebra, or working
some simple physics problems, or doing unit conversions, I prefer the 86,
since it has a more "clean" feel, and it's quicker to use.  But when doing
complex equations or things involving variables, the 89 is really nice.
Pretty print (displaying an equation as you'd write it by hand) saves you so
many times, because you see if you made a mistake with regard to parenthesis
or order of operations.  They're both nice calcs, and when I was taking
college classes, I kept both with me.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, TI has decided not to continue the 85/86
line of calculators.  The 86 just doesn't have the "cool" features like
Flash ROM (which aren't really needed anyway).

The 82/83 line came after the 85, and was created as a dumbed down version.
They removed all the aforementioned features.  Those drop down menus that
cover the screen are very annoying after you've used the 86 (the kind at the
bottom of the screen, like in Probability Simulation):

http://epsstore.ti.com/webs/ProdInfo.asp?deptid=157&catid=514&sku=1340

The 83 line is aimed at middle school and intermediate high school students.

As you might have noticed, I feel pretty strongly about this subject.  It's
always annoyed me that TI dropped their best line of calcs for a dumbed down
line, and everyone happily buys into it, many of them not knowing what they
are missing.

If you think the 83+ is cool, wait until you try the 86 or 89...

> Dear 83 users,
>
> I am a homebound handcapped person who is a ham radio operator as well. I
just
> purchased the TI83+ this weekend and am amazed at all the things it will
do. I
> have worn out two TI calculators
> prior to this purchase. I was wanting to know if anyone of this email
group
> has used this model for
> electronic/electrical calculations? I also wanted to tell everyone hello
on
> this group.
>
> Wayne
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