Survey posted 2005-01-01 17:01 by Jon.

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Survey idea by Michael Vincent.

And there is no "zero" option on purpose!

I don't see why I should buy another one. Unless TI announces one with color display or something like that.

No, TI will probably release a ugly update to the 84 series, and call it like the 84.5+ Lead Edition or something like that. The update would be, of course, more archive memory, since that seems to be TI's current fascination.

They are running out of 8x-numbers :)

They can always use the 90's.

The 90's are reserved for calcs with qwerty-keyboard.

prove it!

Uh, Prove it? Do you really think it would make sense to go 82, 83, 83+, 83+SE, 84+, 84+SE, 9X? No, neither do I.

All of the 80's are taken (except for a TI-87?), and it doesn't make sense to go to a different tens digit... They'd have to name it something completely different (like they did with the v200) OR just call it something like TI-84+GE (Gold Edition). *shrug* Though I don't think they'll be updating the z80 series for a long time.

how sad

Man, your posts are worse than mine back when I first started out. THAT is what's sad. I didn't think it was possible... ;)

As for TI, I wouldn't be surprised if they made a TI-84+GE. I can see that, actually. I don't think they'd make a lot of updates though, they'd just make another calculator to attract more money from the kids who say, "Ooh, that calculator is so pretty! Let me get it!" That's how they've seemed to base their marketing in other areas... *shrug* Though I'd really hope that if they made a TI-84+GE that they'd have some good plans for updating it. I've heard some neat ideas here in the past (I think a memory card type thing would be great, personally)... they should look into them. THEN they'd get more money. In the end, functionality rules over the "prettiness" of the calculator.

*wink* *wink*
how rude man, im not as bad as u. does ne1 here listen to music? cuz i think its nifty. rock on, also paper mario is awesome.

I believe you just proved my point. (Unless you posted something random and used "ne1" as a joke)

He always posts crap like that. Either he's stupid, or he's a n00b.

ill never make it on the streets, im gonna get shot.

Loser.

It's pretty obvious that that entire post was a joke. It was an intentional jab, calculated to get a response. And, you gave him one. Let's all just laugh it off and move on.

Youre so very right about functionality over prettyness!!! but maybe a memory card for extra storage would be very nice, and you could also make the card a nessesity, like todays digital cameras, and therefore lead to more ram on the calc and a percent of the archive mem to be on the card. If i'm not mistaken doesnt HP have a graphing calc with an SD card slot? and if TI were to make money of the flash cards they would have to design, manufacture, and hopefully make money of the flash cards. Think about the games that you could put on a calc (lets just say 84+ GE) with 50K of RAM, then have 32 MB of extra archive so you could hold anything and everything. Now thats a calc, plus if it had a color screen it would boost my rating from cool, to Gotta Have IT!!!

It would be awesome, but when you get that advanced, the only problem is cost. I can imagine them being pretty expensive. I don't know if they'd accept something like that on standardized testing, though. Memory cards could be a "cheating asset" though the extra RAM would be amazing. As for color, it would be cool for programming, but I think it would drain your batteries more quickly. It's all give or take. (The more and more you add, the less of a "calculator" it becomes, lol)

This reminds me of a discussion in a poll a few months back.

Actually, if the design of the card slot meant the card would protrude from the case (basically necessary) and almost all memory was on cards, it would be considered legal-even preferred-because they could now make sure that it had almost no memory.

The HP 49g+ SD card operates just like the SD char interface on a PDA. You push the card into the case until it clicks. At this point the card is basically flush with the casing. (Actually, it's set just a little further in than the rest of the case.) It certainly does *not* protrude.

To get the card out, you actually have to push the card further in with your finger nail. It clicks again and pops out.

All of HP's newer models arte suffering from quality control problems -- a small but loud group of users are complaining of unreliable keyboards and plastic moulding that pops off too easily.

However, with the modern CPU, high(ish) resolution display, SD card support, .5 MB RAM, 2 MB Flash, and IrDA / USB communications, it still falls to a price point of under $150 US online.

Why don't you just get a gameboy xp? Each game is its own little memory card and it even comes in color. Then all you have to do it get somebody to write a game that does math for you on the gameboy and call it your calculator.

That'd be sweet!!!!!!!! Could you write a Periodic table program for the Gameboy Color for me?!?! j/k :P

GameBoy Color uses a Nintendo variant of the Z80. You can get a flashable GB cartridge online, put your Z80 assembly skills to the test, and write your own. You also might be able to port over the z88dk C compiler to make the job easier -- with several megabits of space to work with, the lack of optimization probably wouldn't be too much of a problem.

They are going to make them so you can add SD chips to raise your memory to a gig.

I think TI would do better to update the software it puts in its clculators...I know it's been mentioned several times that many of the programs out there re far more efficient than the routines TI uses. Quality over quantity.

I think they should make a TI-83 Pro.

If they make another 83 series calculator I will hunt them down!

Do you mean TI-84 Pro? They'll want to use the USB if they make a new calculator...

Why go with USB when you could go Ethernet!
6.6895029134491270575881180540904e+198d

The RJ-45 plugs take up much more space.

But really, that would be neat.

MWM

They can continue with the 70's, only the 73 exists.
TI-72 Plus Silver Edition ... Not bad!

There's always a possibility like Silver Edition or Titanium, why not Gold Edition or Diamond?

(dreaming...) TI-83 Plus Diamond... ZiLOG Z80 25 MHz, 96 kB RAM, 8 MB ROM... WOW!!!
Cost: $222 (dream is over... :( )

How would you feel about a 75Mhz ARM9 processor, 330KB available RAM, 800KB available ROM, and an SD memory card slot for up to *512MB* of additional storage, for $149? It's called the HP-49G+. Call me a heathen if you will (particularly since I work here), but that thing is soooo pretty, and the stats are very impressive, considering the price. Now if only I actually had $149... good thing that I love my 89. :-p

Heathen!

WHOA THAT WAS UNEXPECTED

(I keed.)

No one else would've done it. I just had to. ;^)

Yes, with an emulated processor bringing the processor speed WAY DOWN!

Also with a useless 512 MB SD slot on which there are no games to put.

no games?!?! I'll admit there aren't that MANY, but go to hpcalc.org...there's a few nice ones there....

I modified my 84PSE to have a 133 MHz PC processor.
It has a big bulge for the heatsync now and about a 2 hour battery life.

Or a TI-86+ featuring 1.5 MB of flash and 15 MHz processor. :)

4653545 Mhz!!!

4.7THz? I don't think binary computers will EVER get that fast.

I don't know about that. Bill Gates once said that no one could ever use more than 640 KB of memory...

That's more than 1000x faster than processors currently are. I don't think it'd be physically possible to make a *binary* processor run that fast without putting out exceedingly high levels of heat. Now, a quantum computer, that's a different story (assuming we as a species ever figure out how to make ont).

And 1 GB is more than 1600 times as much memory as 640 KB. And when you bought your first hard disk, how big was it, a couple hundreds of megabytes? Currently, the idea of consumer hard disks breaking the terabyte-barrier seems not even remotely ridiculous, more like a matter of time. Yet we can still remember the time when such an amount of storage capacity seemed more than any single person could ever need (or obtain for that matter, given 1.44 MB floppies and 14k4 modems).
I'll agree with you that such a processor would never run off batteries, but I do believe we'll build 'em. (And, by Moore's Law, it'll take only approx. 18 * log_2 1000 =~ 18 * 10 = 180 months, or 180 / 12 = 15 years....)

With our current understanding of electronics, it's fairly safe to say that it *cannot* be done with conventional transistors.

It will not be an electronic device, since electronics, by definition, work with solid-state devices like transistors.

Perhaps quantum computing will be the answer to cmputers that perform in the THz range: theoretically, we should be able to get the machine to be in *every possible* state, in reaction to any input or command *before* the user even even knew he was going to ask a question. But that's ridiculously complex and still quite a way off.

More likely, we'll learn how to use electron states in simple atoms, to behave in a manner similar to switching transistors -- upward spin for '1' and downward spin for '0'. Such 'quantum' transistors are being experimented with now, but I don't think anyone's even begun to think about how to connect them together to make even a simple circuit like a gate, much less a billion-transistor IC. And it'd be very unlikely to operate using electrical circuits beacuse of the (relatively) extremely long propagation delays in getting information from one gate to the next, compared to the switching speed of the gate itself.

I feel *very* confident in saying that you'll never have a Pentium (or anything resembling a Pentium) operating at THz clock speeds.

My first computer had a 1.2GB hard drive and 8MB of RAM.

Also, the 640KB qoute was referring to RAM. Today, I think it'd ridiculous for a personal computer to have more than 768MB of RAM (I get along just fine with 512MB).

I still stand by that we'll never see THz *binary* processors.

Ha, there are many applications for 1GB and upwards of RAM, just think of all the memory you could randomly access... But seriously it makes running multiple programs easier, and a lot of people like to run things like im and music in the background when they play games, and with more RAM you can manage more background processes. Although you are right that for the average consumer, even 512 is more than enough, until you get loaded with spyware. But being able to say you have a gig of memory feels good.

I'm baaaack! After months of ticalc inactivity! I thought this was the perfect post to reply to as I just bought an Apple Powerbook G4 with 512 MB Ram off Ebay! I'm so excited. I just made the payment today. But anyways, I agree that not much more than 512 MB is necessary for the *average* consumer, however it is reasonable for some people to have over 1 GB. I'm thinking about upgrading my Mac to a gig just because I don't want it to run so slow (like my desktop at home does) when I have music, IM's, my internet browser (not saying which one to avoid conflict :P), and my Java/C++ compiler or Macromedia Flash running...I've only got 128 MB in my desktop and it can hardly handle Flash alone! It's so bogged down with spyware and my brother won't let me install software that removes it... :P Well, it's great to be back!

BTW, I probably won't buy any calculators in 2005 either because I already have 2 89's (one broken), an 83+, an HP 49g, and and HP 49g+. That's just about enough for me, and now that I have a laptop, I'll have the emulators as well. That's about all I need. Unless of course TI releases the TI89+ Silver Gold Titanium Pro Edition...then it's a totally different story...well, as long as it's under $200...

With regards to getting faster computers....We have about reached our limit with the current technology, but Intel is looking into making processors run by *light* rather than electricity. Imagine that...a processor that runs at the speed of light. That'll be quite an accomplishment!

making processors that work on light is very complex, but as light is 300.000 km/h and electricity 200.000
even if they would come to the 18 nm line, you stil wouldn't have a Thz processor
(sorry for my ENORMOUS poor English)

Well, with something that can travel 1 and a half times as fast, and, at the same time producing less heat and being compressed into an area unbelievably smaller than the already microscopic "wires" we currently have...that's pretty darn (I choose this word although I have heard the alternative on network television) amazing to me.

umm, i dont think that 300 km/h is the speed of light. Light travels at 3x10^8 m/s...

the "300.000" was supposed to be "300,000" and yes, light does travel at 300,000,000 km/s.. I think thats what i heard.

The only possible [and practical] way to achieve THz processing speed is with parallell processing. [Multi- processors, clusters etc...]. But, that isnt ACTUALL CPU cycles in the THz range, just a whole crap-load of simultaneous cycles.

In terms of Thz CPU's, I find it really hard to believe that such a thing is possible with electronic, silicon wafer technology.

Well other solutions brought up were quantum- or light- technology computers, which both seem very far from what we use today. I've heard of micro-chips that are being developped. Imagine, the wires are an atom wideand the chip is invisible to the eye! Although they're currently all built by hand (with a microscope!), no doubt that soon enough we'll have miniature motherboards that run much faster than what we have today!

Yet, I have to admit that "quantum", "positronic" or "plasma" computers sound much more "science-fiction"-ish and appeal to the imagination. But we're far from that (BTW, I'm sure we'll figure them out one day).

the advantage of light processing isn't so much the speed of the light, its the number of states (think on and off or red, orange, green....

Go Firefox!
hehehe...I just had to say it.

LOLZ!!!

Yay!!!

totally. lol

When I read your comment I remeber my first computer, an 8 Mhz procesor with a HUGE 36 MB hard disk. Long gone are the days when computers had a TURBO button.
Now my pocket calculator has more horsepower....

I still have my "turbo button" computer!!! BTW, for all you ski free fans, press "f" while playing. It's the "Fast mode" made for computers deemed "slow"...you can get away from the monster in that mode! :P

didn't thought I would ever find a way.
but since it is already 2004 and the last time I played was when I was 7, in 1996, skifree wouldn't run on my XP

I have skifree on my XP...search google for "Beowep"...you might find the version I found...a collection of all the classic windows games including solitaire, hearts, minesweeper, pipedream, etc.

OK...let's take another look at that post:
NEAR the end:
"since it is already 2004"
Then AT the end:
"6 January 2005, 10:00 GMT"
Hmmmm....Interesting...

I think I still have the installer for the suit of windows games including skifree. It works fine on Windows XP. It is so old, it'll probably work on almost anything. I doubt it could make WINE choak.

The Matrix Online is a brand new video game that is out (it is out now, isn't it?).

In this game, if you have more ram, the world you play in has more detail. It only creates as much detail as you have ram. Less ram = less detail. Personally, I think all games should be made this way.

There are readily availible computers that have 1 TB of memory-gaming PCs.
That is a astounding 1,600,000 times more than 640 KB.

1TB of memory? You mean 1 GB, right? Hard drive storage in the TB range is no big deal, but 1TB of RAM is no where near mainstream use. Only the most powerful supercomputers in the world pass this mark.

I think he's talking about HD space...I too am occasionally confused when people interchange the word "memory" for both hard drive space and random access memory (RAM)...

If he is talking about HDD space then there is still a bit confusion, as the comment about the 640KB is then out of context, as Bill Gates was refering to RAM.

Oh... RAM...

But if it is a fast disk, it could be used as virtual memory...

Yeah, but the fastest disk is still approx. 1000 times slower than the L1 cache of most computers.

well, mechanical devices will do that to you, lol.
A spinning disk has alot of work to do to keep up with an electron in a solid state device.

We have quantum computers. Scientists got one to multiply three and five recently. Granted, they're not particularly sophisticated, but they do return 15.

...It's a start!!!

About 50-60 years ago, it was a big thing for computers to be able to multiply 3*5, so give it some time. :)

That's very true...heck, it was an accomplishment to ADD 3 and 5...

That reminds me, one time, I was watching a computer show on tv and Bill Gates was shgowing off 98 SE with the plug and play USB software. He plugged in a printer and got a blue screen. Haha. What a great way to represenmt ther reliability and capability of our technological future.

My Dad Said that he bought a 16k expander for $200 in 1991.

i thought it was $640k

With a processor the size of a refrigerator...

Look what you have led to!!! now more than half of the post is about trying to make a processor that runs at 4.7 THz. NEway thats quite an accomplishment to get 200 posts of pushing a couple of buttons and putting MHz!!! at the end. gj

It was mostly meant to be sarcasm.

BUT this brought up a lot of enlightening theories about computing speed.

If scientists could link together 10-30 (I forgot the exact number) electrons, the chain would be a quantum computer, one that is much faster that the world's fastest supercomputer.

Now, imagine that science has purified the process, and can link millions of electrons together.

The processing power will rise exponentially (on a calculator, even a symbolic one, this number will register as infinity), but the size will be miniscule; small enough to fit in a calculator.

I also believe that such processors will have VERY HIGH DEMAND (imagine: animation realistically simulating rain, snow and fire, accurate world simulations capable of simulating complex weather systems, and the list goes on.)

They could be mass-produced to cost very little: imagine the TI-87, capable of doing precice arithmetic with numbers containing 10^100 digits.

All of this is written assuming that scientists will figure out quantum computers, and produce the "quantum processors" at a very little price.

Oh yes, I believe that the interactions between quantum-linked electrons are INSTANTANIOUS.

Please correct me if I'm wrong; I read something about this about a year ago in a magazine, and the rest is just a complex cause-and-effect relationship.

That was my longest post.

I spent about 15 minutes writing that.